Cannes Begins: Iñárritu and His Jury Arrive

by Nathaniel R

The 72nd edition of the world's most famous festival has officially begun. We'll try to bring you comprehensive daily coverage by astral projecting ourselves across the ocean (i.e. watching online videos from France and following critics on Twitter). Earlier today the president of this year's main jury Alejandro González Iñárritu arrived with his gender-balanced fellow jurors in tow (or "classmates," as Maimouna N'Diaye so charmingly put it in the preference conference)... 

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The 2019 Cannes President is... Iñárritu

Iñarritu winning Best Director at Cannes in 2006.Now that Oscar season is winding down, tuxes/jewels returned, post-mortems wrapping up, we must start looking forward. The first big post Oscar event of the film year, that's not a film opening that is, is of course the Cannes Film Festival (May 14th-25th). They've now announced this year's jury president. It's none other than four-time Oscar winner Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman, Babel, The Revenant, Amores Perros) continuing Oscar's obsessive “¡Viva México!”  theme, with five of the last six directing Oscars going to Mexican filmmakers.

Iñárritu succeeds Cate Blanchett, 2018's Jury President. Though its common for film directors to preside, he's the first Mexican ever chosen for the honors. He previously won Best Director at Cannes for Babel (2006)...

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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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Sundance Short Film Winners - clues to *next" year's Oscar list?

by Nathaniel R

Sheila Vand at SundanceWe hope you've been enjoying our coverage of Sundance this year. Our two men on the ground (Murtada and Abe) have already reviewed 10 films. Sundance wraps up next Sunday, February 3rd but we've already got our first bit of award news. A three person jury comprised of Iranian-American actress Sheila Vand (We the Animals, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), Obie award-winning playwright/filmmaker Young Jean Lee, and filmmaker Carter Smith (who won at Sundance 12 years ago for his gay short Bugcrush), have picked the winning shorts of the festival. Six of the seven films honored were by people of color, five were from women, and two from filmmakers who identify as LGBTQ. (Yes, Sundance has made huge diversity efforts these past few years... and they've put their money where their mouth is, both in their film selections and in press badges, even subsidizing minority journalists to combat the inequities in entertainment journalism).

Sundance is an Oscar-qualifying festival which means you might hear about a few of these shorts next year about this time if they're very lucky...

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TIFF 2018 Finale. Jury of One: Nathaniel

OKAY WRAPPING UP TIFF NOW. Unless you are on an actual jury at a festival, you see a different set of films than everyone else attending (with a handful of crossovers) so I couldn't corral votes with my festival roomies (Nick, Joe, and Chris -- instead we did a podcast). So I thought it might be fun to share my favorites from the festival in 'nominee' Oscar style. These are not, of course, Oscar predictions or even Film Bitch ballots because not all of the films are guaranteed eligibility this year and we've had 8 months of good movies before these and we'll have 3 months of hopefully good movies afterwards that they'll have to compete with. But here's the achievements within traditional awards categories that thrilled me most at TIFF during that 29 film screening marathon.

They're listed in alpha order (by film) except the actors (by name) and links go to our festival reviews if we managed one -- a few more reviews are half written but we need to wrap up TIFF so expect more on A Star is Born, Beautiful Boy, Border, and more soon as they'll be in theaters within the next few weeks.

TEN BEST FILMS I SAW AT TIFF

"Roma" is rich with endless details and emotional punch

• Border (Sweden)
• First Man (US)
• Museo (Mexico)
• The River (Kazakshtan)
• Roma (Mexico)
• A Star is Born (US)
• Transit (Germany)
• Widows (US)
• Wildlife (US)
• Woman at War (Iceland)

Runners up: Cold War (Poland)

Lots more after the jump including best performances, best visuals, best dogs (yes, really), best original songs and more...

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