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Today, SFFILM announced their honorees for the annual 2024 SFFILM Awards Night: Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Denis Villeneuve; award winning global superstar Demi Moore; emerging filmmaker Malcolm Washington; and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Jason Reitman.
The celebratory event honors exemplary achievement in film craft and is a fundraiser with proceeds from the event supporting the organization’s mission to discover, nurture, and showcase the next generation of film artists. The annual dinner and awards presentation event is well established in film industry awards season schedules and philanthropic social calendars. SFFILM Awards Night will take place on Monday, December 9, 2024 at San Francisco’s Gateway Pavilion at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.
“For 67 years, SFFILM has provided a gateway for bold voices in film to thrive and reach discerning audiences who embrace the experience of going out to the movies,” said SFFILM’s Executive Director, Anne Lai. “SFFILM Awards Night is not only a celebration of the year's most trailblazing artists, but also an opportunity to honor distinctive talent who inspire the next generation of filmmakers who will enrich our lives and communities in the years to come."
“We are so proud to honor this group of individuals as we close out 2024. Their craft and artistry elevates the cinematic experience and reminds us why we collectively love the power of film,” said SFFILM Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks. “Denis, Demi, Malcolm, and Jason are all intrepid, tenacious, and imaginative creatives. We look forward to honoring their work at SFFILM’s annual fundraiser.”
Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction: Denis Villeneuve
The Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction is presented each year to one of the masters of world cinema and is given in memory of the founder of the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1957. Past recipients include Greta Gerwig (2023), Ryan Coogler (2022), Jane Campion (2021), Chloé Zhao (2020), Marielle Heller (2019), Steve MᶜQueen (2018), Kathryn Bigelow (2017), Mira Nair (2016), Guillermo del Toro (2015), Richard Li
This Year’s Annual Fundraiser Supporting SFFILM’s Mission-Driven Initiatives Will Honor Denis Villeneuve with the Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction, Demi Moore with the Maria Manetti Shrem Award for Acting, Malcolm Washington with the George Gund III Award for Virtuosity, and Jason Reitman with the Nion McEvoy & Leslie Berriman Award for Storytelling
From L to R: Denis Villeneuve, Demi Moore, Malcolm Washington, Jason Reitman . Photos courtesy of rights holders.
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Today, SFFILM announced their honorees for the annual 2024 SFFILM Awards Night: Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Denis Villeneuve; award winning global superstar Demi Moore; emerging filmmaker Malcolm Washington; and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Jason Reitman.
The celebratory event honors exemplary achievement in film craft and is a fundraiser with proceeds from the event supporting the organization’s mission to discover, nurture, and showcase the next generation of film artists. The annual dinner and awards presentation event is well established in film industry awards season schedules and philanthropic social calendars. SFFILM Awards Night will take place on Monday, December 9, 2024 at San Francisco’s Gateway Pavilion at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.
“For 67 years, SFFILM has provided a gateway for bold voices in film to thrive and reach discerning audiences who embrace the experience of going out to the movies,” said SFFILM’s Executive Director, Anne Lai. “SFFILM Awards Night is not only a celebration of the year's most trailblazing artists, but also an opportunity to honor distinctive talent who inspire the next generation of filmmakers who will enrich our lives and communities in the years to come."
“We are so proud to honor this group of individuals as we close out 2024. Their craft and artistry elevates the cinematic experience and reminds us why we collectively love the power of film,” said SFFILM Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks. “Denis, Demi, Malcolm, and Jason are all intrepid, tenacious, and imaginative creatives. We look forward to honoring their work at SFFILM’s annual fundraiser.”
Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction: Denis Villeneuve
The Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction is presented each year to one of the masters of world cinema and is given in memory of the founder of the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1957. Past recipients include Greta Gerwig (2023), Ryan Coogler (2022), Jane Campion (2021), Chloé Zhao (2020), Marielle Heller (2019), Steve MᶜQueen (2018), Kathryn Bigelow (2017), Mira Nair (2016), Guillermo del Toro (2015), Richard Li
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> Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in focus
Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival reveals the selection for the First Feature Competition 2024.
The strand, dedicated exclusively for the full-length film debutants, includes 7 world premieres and 4 international premieres. All of the authors will be present in Tallinn. "Even before we received our A-class status in 2014, we've made it a priority to support new talents, especially those making their debut. This is our niche in the global festival stage", said Tiina Lokk, the Festival Director. She elaborated: "We've made our...
The 11-piece competition strand includes six world premieres and five international premieres. The new team is led by Estonian documentary director, producer and Associate professor at the Baltic Film, Media and Arts School of Tallinn University, Marianna Kaat (The Last Relic, PÖFF 2023). The other three programmers are: self-shooting producer/director Mike Arnott, long-time PÖFF programm
As in previous years, the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival will be honouring two distinguished special guests. Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay will receive the GRAND IFFMH AWARD, while the festival will dedicate a HOMAGE to Polish director Agnieszka Holland. By conferring these honours, the festival will be recognising two of the most eminent female directors of our time for their work in cinema.
Festival director Dr Sascha Keilholz: “This year we are honouring two female directors whose exceptionalism manifests itself in films that explore limits. In Agnieszka Holland’s case, these are political borders and geographical boundaries. Unsparingly, she confronts us with the catastrophic consequences of war and displacement. Her films tell of perpetrators and victims, of historical iniquity, as seen in ›Europa Europa‹ (1990), but also of present-day abominations, as seen in ›Green Border‹ (2023). Many of her films link the past to the present, helping us to learn from critical moments in history. Agnieszka Holland is a chronicler and a rebel.
Lynne Ramsay, for her part, is synonymous with resistance to class structures. She lends visibility to marginalised groups and elevates them from the fringes of society to the big screen. She dives into extraordinarily traumatising situations and brings the inconceivable to the surface. What we see in her films, the present, is always an echo of a traumatic past and a hint at future events. An almost irresolvable ambiguity runs through all her films. They fill us with unease, yet still – or precisely because of this – lead us into temptation. Both directors exemplify a cinematic oeuvre that we cannot and do not wish to ignore.”
GRAND IFFMH AWARD for Lynne Ramsay
The GRAND IFFMH AWARD is the IFFMH’s way of honouring contemporary filmmakers for their individual formative vision of cinema. Following Guillaume Nicloux (2021), Alice Winocour (2022) and Nicolas Winding Refn (2023), Lynne Ramsay will receive the 10,000-euro award this year.
By Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent
“Imagine today’s Society as a branch of civilization about to reach a dead end.” You want to defend and explain Francis Ford Coppola’s MEGALOPOLIS just as much as narrator Laurence Fishburne, who tries to make the case during the movie that this oddball gorgeous landscape of mildly psychotic imagery is historic. You want to love Adam Driver and his maniacal urban hive-builder genius as someone amazing and heretofore unseen. “Don’t let the now destroy the forever.” But Ancient Rome intrudes along with a gaudy talent show of predictable human vices. Yet the embodiment of said worn vices is in the amazingly talented forms of wicked Shia LaBeouf, bitchy Aubrey Plaza, witchy Kathryn Hunter, even rejuvenated Dustin Hoffman.
And then you realize what you are looking at, and this is big...
Francis Ford Coppola is the first cinematic director to reach his creative singularity, the point at which artistic growth has become unsustainable with unforeseen effects on future moviegoers.
Coppola’s Artistic Singularity, that’s reason enough to set your Clockwork Orange eye-openers for this lush and unruly fable of the patriarchy’s last glimpse of a familiar universe. The place where Game of Thrones’ Nathalie Emmanuel is still carrying out someone else’s agenda. And even the dailed-up sanpaku eyes of Aubrey Plaza fail to wink out in irony at the audience at any time. “One, two, three yippee-yee.”
MEGALOPOLIS from Lionsgate opened last week, and stars Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, and Dustin Hoffman.
Stare at the trailer here.
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Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024) 1½ out of 5 stars Francis Ford Coppola, the celebrated auteur who made his name in the 1970s with such Hollywood New Wave classics as The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now, is out with a new movie, Megalopolis, which he wrote as well as directed. […]
The post “Megalopolis” Is a Mega Mess first appeared on Film Festival Today.
Arnold, Audiard, Baker, Coppola, Courcol, Elliot, Fargeat, Kapadia, Rasoulof, Salles, Sangsoo, Schrader and Sorrentino to compete in San Sebastian Festival’s Perlak section
‘Marco’, by Jon Garaño and Aitor Arregi, will close the section, also to show ‘The Wild Robot’ and ‘Maria Callas: Letters and Memories’ out of competition
https://youtu.be/NV9mhQyiSnc?si=bCACNQaTFlg5RHhl
The Palme d’Or and a wide representation of the award-winners from the last Festival de Cannes, the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlinale and the Annecy Cristal Award for Best Feature Film will compete for the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award alongside other films selected from the Venice Mostra, Toronto and other festivals. Andrea Arnold, Jacques Audiard, Sean Baker, Francis Ford Coppola, Emmanuel Courcol, Adam Elliot, Coralie Fargeat, Payal Kapadia, Mohammad Rasoulof, Walter Salles, Hong Sangsoo, Paul Schrader and Paolo Sorrentino will show their new features in a section to include three films out of competition: Marco, with which Jon Garaño and Aitor Arregi will close Perlak at the Velodrome; the animated feature film The Wild Robot, from Chris Sanders, and the non-fiction Maria Callas: Letters and Memories, from Tom Volf and Yannis Dimolitsas.
Emilia Pérez, which earned Jacques Audiard (Paris, 1952) the Jury Prize at the last Festival de Cannes, will open the Perlak competition. The female protagonists featuring Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz also jointly landed the Best Actress Award for this film in which a Mexican cartel leader decides to change sex in a cast also starring Edgar Ramírez. Audiard already landed the Grand Jury Prize in Cannes thanks to Un Prophète / A Prophet (2009) and the Palme d’or with Dheepan (2015), while he carried off Best Director at the Venice Mostra with Les frères Sisters / The Sisters Brothers (Perlak, 2018). In 2009 his film De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté / The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2004) participated in the themed retrospective Backwash: Cutting Edge of French cinema.
Having shown Cow (2021) as a Cannes Premiere, Andrea Arnold (Dartford, 1961) will present Bird in Perlak, a movie included in the Official Selection at Cannes, where she has won the Jury Prize on three occasions thanks to Red Road (2006), Fish Tank (2009) and American Honey (2016). The latest work from the British filmmaker tells the tale of a 12-year-old teen who lives with her father and brother in a squat in North Kent.
Anora, winning film of the last Palme d’or at Cannes, is also included in the Perlak selection, Its author, Sean Baker (Summit, 1971), follows the odyssey of a young sex worker in Brooklyn who marries a Russian oligarch. This will be the North American director’s third participation in the section after The Florida Project (Perlak, 2017), premiered in the Quinzaine des Cinéastes at Cannes and Red Rocket (Perlak, 2021), a competitor in the official selection at the Festival de Cannes.
Francis Ford Coppola (Detroit, 1939) also competed at the last edition of the French event with Megalopolis, an epic Roman fable set in an imaginary Amer
HINTS AND ALLEGATIONS
I had a couple of readers send me information about possible confirmations/inclusions about films and/or attendees this past week.
Back on July 23rd I posted an MTFB special about announcements from Toronto, Venice and New York. One of the films I especially noted was Andrea Arnold's Bird as it was labeled as a North American Premiere on the TIFF official website but had been posted here on X as a Canadian Premiere. However, MTFB reader Bobby Harris contacted me to reveal that TIFF's entry for Bird on the website has been changed to Canadian:
So, for me, that's going to mean that I'm putting Bird back on the Ten Bets/Possible list when it gets updated on Thursday.
Additionally, I had another reader reach out to convey intell about three possible attendees for TFF. I'm going to be a little cagey here as to who/where the info came from as well as explicitly naming names-at least for now. I will say that a couple of the names would confirm that Anora and Emilia Perez will play Telluride. The third person's presence would indicate one or possibly two films neither of which are currently among the "Bets" or "Possibles".
WHO COULD BE AT TFF#51?
For fun, let's assume I'm right about almost everything playing at TFF #51; what star wattage could we see in town, on panels, doing Q&A's?
Anora: Sean Baker, Mikey Madison
Conclave: Edward Berger, Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini
Emilia Perez: Jacques Audiard, Zoe Saldana, Sele na Gomez, Karla Sofia Gascon, Adriana Paz
The End: Joshua Oppenheimer, Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, Geo
CHACKING GTHE DISTRIBUTORS: SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
I think it's fair to say that no distributor has had a longer term relationship with the Telluride Film Festival than Sony Pictures Classics. SPC's presence at TFF has been a staple for many years. His a reminder of the films from SPC that have played the fest over the last ten years:
2013: The Invisible Woman, Jodorowsky's Dune, The Lunchbox, The Past, Tim's Vermeer.
2014: Foxcatcher, Leviathan, Merchants of Doubt, Mr. Turner, Red Army, Salt of the Earth and Wild Tales.
2015: Son of Saul
2016: The Eagle Huntress, Toni Erdmann, Maudie, Norman: The Moderate Rise...
2017: Fantastic Woman, Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, Foxtrot, Loveless, The Rider.
2018: The White Crow
2019: Pain and Glory, The Climb, Lyrebird
2020 (if it had happened): The Duke, The Father, The Truffle Hunters
2021: Julia, The Duke
2022: One Fine Morning, Living, The Return of Tanya Tucker, Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song.
2023: The Teachers' Lounge, They Shot the Piano Player, Daddio, Strange Way of Life
This year SPC could bring Pedro Almodovar's The Room Next Door, Walter Salles I'm Still Here and an outside possibility is Sylvain Chomet's animated The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol (though IMDb Pro has it listed as still filming).
The Room Next Door is Almodovar's first English language feature film. Last year his Strange Way of Life was at TFF #50 and the director has had a long history with Telluride.
Walter Salles' I'm Still Here also has a TFF history (Central Station 1998, The Motorcycle Diaries 2004) but it has been a long time since he last had a film in the San Juans.
Chances:
The Room Next Door 50%
I'm Still Here 35%
Marcel Pagnol 10%
EMILIA PEREZ TRAILER
We have a foreign language trailer for Jacques Audiard's Cannes prize winner Emilia Perez. Here it is from YouTube:
MEGALOPOLIS STILL COSTING COPPOLA
We noted last week that Lionsgate had picked up Francis Ford Coppola's passion project. Since then The Hollywood Reporter reported last week that the $120 million deal did not include any money for marketing. THR's Aaron Couch and Kim Masters wrote:
"Lionsgate, it appears, will not be paying for marketing. Instead, Coppola is expected to provide the spend himself. Lionsgate intends to put the feature on more than 1,500 screens, which sources in the distribution
TEN BETS FOR TFF #51
I've been doing the "Ten Bets" format as a way of predicting Telluride lineups for since 2011.
Here's last year's first Ten Bets with the films that actually played TFF #50 in Bold.
1) The Holdovers/Payne
2) May December/Haynes
3) Nyad/Chin and Vasarhelyi
4) Monster/Kore-eda
5) (All of Us)Strangers/Haigh
6) El Conde/Larrain
7) Poor Things/Lanthimos
8) Anatomy of a Fall/Triet
9) The American Buffalo/Burns
10) The End/Oppenheimer
So 6 of 10.
In previous years the correct ratios were:
2011: 8/10
2012: 5/10
2013: 6/10
2014: 7/10
2015: 4/10
2016: 3/10
2017: 7/10
2018: 5/10
2019: 4/10
2020: No fest
2021: 8/10
That puts the average of correct picks on this first whirl at 5.7.
That being said, I feel less confidence about this year's first Ten Bets than maybe any other year. Sooo... with great trepidation...here are 2024's first Ten Bets for TFF:
1) Anora/Sean Baker
2) The Seed of the Scared Fig/Mohammad Rasoulof
3) Emilia Perez/Jacques Audiard
4) The Room Next Door/Pedro Almodovar
5) Bird/Andrea Arnold
6) Maria/Pablo Larrain
7) Oh, Canada/Paul Schrader
8) The End/Joshua Oppenheimer
9) Queer/Luca Guadagnino
10) Conclave/Edward Berger
Other possibilities:
We Live in Time/Crowley
I'm Still Here/Salles
Parthenope/Sorrentino
In the Hand of Dante/Schnabel
Hard Truths/Leigh
The Piano Lesson/Washington
Untitled Noah Baumbach
Nickel Boys/Ross
Blitz/McQueen
Megalopolis/Coppola
Now we'll see how this all plays out.
COPPOLA AND MEGALOPOLIS GET A DISTRIBUTOR
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