Film Independent Spirit Awards Moves to Gender-Neutral Acting Categories

Here are your Manchester United evening headlines on Sunday, September 18.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “Walls Can Talk,” the latest film by Spain Carlos Saura, director of “Raise Ravens,” “Deprisa, Deprisa” and “Carmen,” has been acquired for intentional sales by Madrid-based Latido.   Produced by María del Puy Alvarado at Malvalanda (“Madre,” “The Mole Agent”) and distributed in Spain by José Maria nd Miguel Morales’ Wanda Vision, “Walls Can Talk” will world premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival as an RTVE Gala.  The doc feature sees Saura conduct his own inquest into the origins of art, directing and for once starring in a film. In it, he visits masterpieces of paleolithic art– in Spain’s Altamira and El Castillo caves, for instance – and asks modern (Miquel Barceló) and graffiti artists and urban creators (Suso 33, Zeta, Musa71) about what drives them to paint. 

TÀR, Todd Field’s return to filmmaking after a 16-year stretch, and starring a buzzed about Cate Blanchett, has its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this evening. The Focus Features drama follows Blanchett’s titular conductor, the first female chief conductor of a major German orchestra who is at the height of and grappling with her genius, swimming in the abyss of it and the toll it takes on those closest to her while a #MeToo scandal swirls.

history,” said Kim Sajet, Director of Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. “But I don’t think anyone anticipated the emotional impact these artworks would ultimately have on so many Americans acrossthe country. Through the power of documentary film, ‘Picturing the Obamas’ takes us out of the galleryand into communities, reminding us that art is powerful and portraiture can change the world.”“Barack and Michelle Obama continue to inspire individuals and communities nationwide,” added Pamela Aguilar, VP of Content and Programming at the Smithsonian Channel.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and Media Sandbox Films and Gamechanger Films will develop “Under the Dream,” a new documentary feature that will be co-directed and co-produced by Saelyx Finna, Mia Imani and Laurie Polisky. The film is a creative documentary about the uncharted realm of dream technology and the Black-led movement to protect our minds at night. Gamechanger CEO Effie Brown, and Sandbox Film’s Jessica Harrop, head of production and development, and founding director Greg Boustead will be acting as executive producers on the project.   Sandbox is a documentary studio behind “Fire of Love,” a look at married volcanologists that debuted at Sundance before selling to National Geographic Documentary Films, and Gamechanger Films is a production company behind the upcoming A24 release “The Inspection.”

Clayton Davis Jennifer Fox, the Oscar nominated producer of “Michael Clayton” (2007), has been tapped to produce the 13th Governors Awards for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Marking her fourth time producing the event, Fox will assemble the annual ceremony where Euzhan Palcy, Diane Warren and Peter Weir will receive Honorary Oscars and Michael J. Fox will accept the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. “We’re thrilled to have Jennifer back at the helm to help us kick off Oscar season with a tribute fitting to these four extraordinary individuals,” says Janet Yang, Academy President. “Her contribution in past years has only elevated this truly special and joyous event.”

newly appointed Academy president Janet Yang said Wednesday.Michael J. Fox will be honored with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, won by artists such as Geena Davis and Tyler Perry in recent years, and Honorary Awards will be given to directors Euzhan Palcy (“A Dry White Season”) and Peter Weir (“Witness”), as well as veteran composer Diane Warren, who just last year received her 13th Academy Award nomination.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large When the Television Academy revealed this year’s Primetime Emmy submissions in June, there were a few glaring omissions. Fans of Netflix’s young adult drama “Heartstopper” (pictured above) were particularly perplexed, until they learned that the show instead opted to vie for a trophy in the new Children’s & Family Emmy Awards run by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. With this move, the coming-of-age tale based on a graphic novel about a gay teen who falls in love with his classmate now has a better shot at winning than it would if it were still competing for a Primetime Emmy trophy. Entries were due earlier this month for the Children’s & Family Emmys, which will include around 50 categories. Some of those races have moved over from the Daytime Emmys, which New York-based NATAS also oversees, while others are new, to reflect the full scope of youth-oriented fare (including shows like “Heartstopper” that might have previously competed for the Primetime Emmy race, which is administered by the Los Angeles-based Television Academy).

Venice Film Festival jury president Julianne Moore this afternoon extolled the importance of keeping art top of mind when talking about the future of cinema.

The Berlin Film Festival has appointed Los Angeles-based, US industry expert Jacqueline Lyanga as a US delegate as it expands its international network and seeks to consolidate contacts with the US film industry and filmmakers.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Utopia has acquired Participant Media’s feature documentary “Unseen Skies,” which the U.S. distributor will release on Sept. 13. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Yaara Bou Melhem, “Unseen Skies” explores the evolution of state and corporate surveillance. The film follows American artist and geographer Trevor Paglen as he launches an artwork called “Orbital Reflector” into space, visible with the naked eye from Earth, to highlight the global impact of technology in the modern world. Having achieved international notoriety for his conceptual art, which fuses photography and large-scale multidisciplinary events, Paglen’s work reveals the largely unseen power structures of technology and surveillance that shape, impact and increasingly define the framework of our lives.

Ralph Eggleston, a longtime animator and art director who worked on several Pixar films starting with Toy Story and won an Oscar for directing the animated short For the Birds, died Sunday of pancreatic cancer in Lake Charles, LA, Pixar announced. He was 56.

Carson Burton Ralph Eggleston, an Academy Award-winning animator, art director and production designer at Pixar Animation Studios, died on Monday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56 years old. Eggleston won the animated short film Oscar for writing and directing the 2001 Pixar film “For the Birds.” Pixar tweeted a tribute to him, saying, “Pixar and the world will be forever grateful.”In memory of Ralph Eggleston—animator, director, art director, storyboard artist, writer, production designer, and our dear friend. Pixar and the world will be forever grateful. ❤ pic.twitter.com/YzZACENcZw The animator also served as art director on the original “Toy Story,” and his work as an artist has been seen on numerous Pixar films including “Monsters, Inc.,” “Finding Nemo,” “Wall-E,” “Cars,” “The Incredibles” and “Inside Out.” His final credited work was in 2020’s “Soul,” where he served as a development artist within the art department.

EXCLUSIVE: Skydance Media has named industry veteran Carin Sage to the newly created role of Executive Vice President of Feature Film for the company. With more than 30 years of agency experience, Sage will be responsible for bringing in new feature projects and overseeing films through all phases from inception to production.

Ralph Eggleston, an animation whiz who was hired by Pixar in the lead-up to the release of “Toy Story,” has died following a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.Over the course of his storied career, Eggleston went on to serve in a variety of roles at Pixar, memorably contributing to everything from “Monsters, Inc.” to both “Incredibles” movies to “Inside Out” and “Soul.” (The animation studio didn’t release an official statement but sent an email to staff confirming the news this morning.)Eggleston started his career with former Disney animator Bill Kroyer, working on things like the title sequence for “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and eventually Kroyer’s directorial debut “Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest.” Eggleston then left to join Disney, working on some of the most celebrated movies in the company’s filmography ( “Aladdin,” “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas”) before joining Pixar in 1992 as the studio was transforming from a company that did software and commercials (the short films were basically used to showcase whatever technology Pixar was hawking at the time) to a full-fledged movie studio.He would serve as an art director for “Toy Story.” The moving van company that Andy’s family uses in the final chase is even named after his nickname: Eggman Movers.

According to its website, its menu received awards and critical acclaim over the years from the likes of Gourmet Magazine, Wine Spectator, L.A. Magazine, Bon Appetit and others. Open Table also honored it with the website and app’s Most Vibrant Bar Scene award.It will have an estate sale “of art, momentos and objects” dating to the restaurant’s 1996 opening on a date to be determined after the closure. The last day of business will be Monday, Sept.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Austrian director David Wagner’s feature debut “Eismayer,” which has its world premiere in Venice Critics’ Week on Sunday, has been picked up for international sales by Paris-based Loco Films. The trailer for the film debuts here (below). In a statement, Loco’s chiefs Laurent Danielou and Arnaud Godart said: “From this true and extraordinary story, [Wagner] managed to make a very subtle and cinematic film.” The film centers on Sergeant Major Eismayer, who is known and feared as the toughest training officer in the Austrian armed forces, ruthless with recruits and unwavering in his discipline, order and macho toughness. But when he starts to fall in love with Falak, a new recruit who unashamedly embraces his homosexuality, Eismayer’s closeted existence is shaken to the core. To a man like Eismayer, loving another man cannot be reconciled with the understanding of what a model soldier should be. Will he choose to protect his badass, tough guy image over all else, or can he follow his heart and his true desire? The film is inspired by a true story.

They start handing out Emmys next weekend with back-to-back Creative Arts ceremonies, followed on Monday, September 12 with the Primetime Emmys on NBC. But even as the TV awards season still has a couple of weeks to go before becoming history, the Oscar season is officially getting underway.

Jon Hamm is stepping into a role first made famous by Chevy Chase.

Home to films like “Lady Bird,” “Eighth Grade” and “Mid90s,” A24 is synonymous with a certain brand of indie, auteur-driven coming-of-age story. The company’s latest is “Funny Pages,” the debut feature film from writer-director Owen Kline (who you might recognize as Frank from “The Squid and the Whale”). Set in the suburbs of New Jersey, “Funny Pages” follows Robert (Daniel Zolghadri), a talented high schooler determined to make his way as a cartoonist.

EXCLUSIVE: The long-awaited adaptation of the renowned video game franchise, BioShock, looks to be gaining momentum in a big way as sources tell Deadline that Netflix has tapped Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence to helm the pic with Michael Green adapting the script. The directing and writing assignment had been some of the more sough after jobs in the industry after Netflix announced in February that they were partnering with video game holding company Take-Two Interactive and its game publisher subsidiary, 2K, to produce a BioShock film. Since then, the studio and its partners have been aiming high on who would help guide this project given the scope of the property looking at A-list directors and writers for the job.

“Master of Light” follows the story of George Anthony Morton, a Black painter who was sentenced to ten years in prison for dealing drugs and spent his time behind bars honing his craft as a classical artist. After returning to the outside world, he heads home to Kansas City to use his art to mend his broken relationship with his mother while trying to break into an artistic world dominated by white painters.

EJ Panaligan editorNetflix has debuted the first teaser for its black comedy “White Noise,” unveiling writer-director Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s landmark novel.“White Noise” will be the first film to open both the Venice Film Festival (at the end of August) and the New York Film Festival (in October). Baumbach’s most recent film, “Marriage Story,” also starring Adam Driver (opposite Scarlett Johansson), played at both festivals in 2019.Driver stars as Jack Gladney, a professor of Hitler studies at a Midwest liberal arts college. In the original novel, Gladney, his wife, Babette (Greta Gerwig), and their children must grapple with the “Airborne Toxic Event,” which casts chemical waste over their town and puts them all in danger. Raffey Cassidy, Alessandro Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lars Eidinger, Don Cheadle and André Benjamin, better known as André 3000 of Atlanta hip-hop duo Outkast, round out the cast.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent When Angelina Jolie read Alessandro Baricco’s short novel “Without Blood” — the basis for her next directorial effort — the Italian fable about the brutality of war and healing in its aftermath had an immediate  therapeutic effect.  “I read it right as I was going through the beginning of a very dark time in my life. I read it in the month that followed my divorce [from Brad Pitt in 2016],” recalls Jolie, who shot the adaptation at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. “It had the effect on me that it’s had on so many people,” Jolie says, noting that the blurb on the cover says that the book is about the complexity of the human condition.  

José Andrés, Clive Davis, Ava DuVernay, Marian Wright Edelman, Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., Serena Williams and Venus Williams will be honored at the National Portrait Gallery’s Portrait of a Nation Awards on Nov. 12.

The pan-Canadian Selection Committee has chosen director Jason Loftus’ Eternal Spring as its entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar.

Naman Ramachandran “Me, My Mom & Sharmila,” the feature directorial debut of queer Muslim writer-director Fawzia Mirza, has set its cast. The film will feature Amrit Kaur, the breakout star of Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble’s HBO Max series “The Sex Lives of College Girls”; Hamza Haq, who won best actor in 2021 and 2022 at the Canadian Screen Awards for CTV medical drama “Transplant”; and Nimra Bucha (“Ms. Marvel,” “Churails”). Set in 1999, the film follows Azra (Kaur) over 48 hours as she travels from her home in Canada to her parents’ homeland of Pakistan to bury her father (Haq). Azra struggles to connect with her conservative mother Mariam (Bucha), but her return to Pakistan launches her into memories both real and imagined that reveal their unexpected similarities.

Naman Ramachandran On Aug. 24, Ukraine independence day, the Venice Film Festival has revealed that it will host a Ukrainian Day on Sept. 8, as part of the festival’s Venice Production Bridge initiative. The day will kick off with a panel discussion introduced by the president of the Biennale, Roberto Cicutto, and the artistic director of the 79th festival, Alberto Barbera. Panelists include the Ambassador of Ukraine to Italy, Yaroslav Melnyk; the head of the National Cinema Institution of Ukraine, Marina Kuderchuk; the director of the film “Luxembourg, Luxembourg” (which will screen in competition in the festival’s Horizons strand), Antonio Lukich; the director of the film “Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” (screening out of competition), Evgeny Afineevsky; the exhibiting artist in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 59th Biennale Arte, Pavlo Makov; the curator of the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 59th Biennale Arte, Boris Filonenko; the representative of Ukraine’s Council for State Support of Cinematography, Polina Tolmacheva; the Cultural Attaché of Ukraine, the actor and filmmaker Daria Tregubova; and the producer and head of civic organization Andriy Nogin. The panel will be moderated by Volodymyr Ostapchuk.

The BFI London Film Festival will debut Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin’s latest project as part of LFF Expanded, the festival’s Immersive Art and Extended Realities strand, which runs from October 5-16, 2022.

EXCLUSIVE: French network M6 has ordered a drama about a man who manipulates women and turns deception into an art form.

Naman Ramachandran The BFI London Film Festival has revealed the line-up for LFF Expanded, its immersive art and extended realities strand (Oct. 5-16). Programmed by Ulrich Schrauth, the BFI’s immersive art and XR curator, this year’s program features interactive virtual reality, screen-based installations, augmented reality, mixed reality, immersive audio experience and live performance. The program will be at multiple venues on London’s South Bank. The highlight of the program is the world premiere, commissioned by the festival, of Guy Maddin’s “Haunted Hotel: A Melodrama in Augmented Reality,” which promises to transport the audience into a surreal paper world, created from a selection of clippings drawn from Maddin’s own personal archive, set to a soundscape by composer Magnus Fiennes.

The Television Academy on Tuesday announced its first batch of presenters for this year’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards, which will be held over two consecutive nights, Saturday, Sept. 3, and Sunday, Sept. 4.

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros is going all in on The Batman director Matt Reeves and his 6th & Idaho production company. He has become the first filmmaker given an overall first look film deal since Warner Bros Pictures Group Co-Chairs/CEOs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy were hired by Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav to steer the film division. In addition, Reeves has re-upped with the Warner Bros. Television Group and Chairman Channing Dungey, where he is also working on The Batman spinoff series The Penguin with Colin Farrell.

Manori Ravindran International EditorBefore the iPhone, there was the mighty BlackBerry — the world’s first smartphone, which enjoyed a meteoric rise in the early 2000s only to meet a catastrophic demise.A new movie from “The Dirties” and “Operation Avalanche” director Matt Johnson, simply entitled “BlackBerry,” will detail the rise and fall of the once-ubiquitous device as its Canadian parent company Research in Motion floundered in legal disputes and eventually lost its market advantage to competitors such as Apple and Samsung. At the heart of the story is the business relationship between co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie.The film’s cast is led by Jay Baruchel (“This Is The End,” “Knocked Up”) and Glenn Howerton (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “A.P.

Wilson Chapman editorMethod acting has taken something of a beating from celebrities in recent years, with stars like Brian Cox, David Harbour and Mads Mikkelsen calling the process “dangerous,” “pretentious” and even a “disease.” But the art form has a defender in Andrew Garfield, who spoke about the method in an interview on popular podcast “WTF with Marc Maron.”“There [have] been a lot of misconceptions about what method acting is, I think,” Garfield said. “People are still acting in that way, and it’s not about being an asshole to everyone on set.