BIFA loves "Wild Rose" and "David Copperfield"

British Independent Film Awards, or BIFA for short, have announced their nominations for the 2019 film year. Like the Gothams and Spirits they are juried which means a small group of people decide various categories before the entire membership votes on the winners. Strangely, despite that they focused on a small pool of films (the leaders, Wild Rose and The Personal History of David Copperfield have a staggering 21 nominations between them. Yikes! 

Our friend and sometimes Smackdown guest Guy Lodge was on the panel this year and here are their choices.

Best British Independent Film

• Bait, Mark Jenkin, Kate Byers, Linn Waite

• For Sama, Waad Al-Kateab, Edward Watts

• The Personal History Of David Copperfield, Armando Iannucci, Simon Blackwell, Kevin Loader The Souvenir Joanna Hogg, Luke Schiller

• The Souvenir, Joanna Hogg, Luke Schiller

• Wild Rose, Tom Harper, Nicole Taylor, Faye Ward

Bait and David Copperfield have not yet arrived stateside. The latter is coming in 2020 and with lots of name actors it will get some attention (plus it's quite funny) but we had to look up Bait to see what it was. We must keep an eye out due to the BIFA love...

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Abe's Sundance 2019 Wrap

Abe Fried-Tanzer closing out his Sundance coverage for TFE. Thanks, Abe!

Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat in ANIMALS (2019)

The Sundance Film Festival is officially over, closing out a busy week and a half of nonstop movies. I managed to catch 46 titles this year, most of which I enjoyed. Among them were the Grand Jury Prize winners from the U.S. Dramatic Competition, Clemency, and the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, The Souvenir, both of which were written up by Murtada. While I appreciated both of those films, here are my choices for BEST of the fest in various categories... 

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