Concrete, Bikini Kill and Bad Grandpas: 11 Films to Catch at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival
This year’s Sundance Film Festival promises a somewhat elegiac atmosphere. For starters, this is the last time the festival will take place in snowy Park City, Utah, its home since 1981. (Next year, Sundance will take up residence in similarly snowy Boulder, Colorado.) Adding to the mournful vibe is the still fresh loss of Robert Redford, the festival’s founder and presiding spirit, who died in September. Another devastating loss came with the passing of Tammie Rosen, Sundance’s dedicated Chief Communications Officer, who died in December after a lengthy battle with cancer. Amid these many lamentations, it’s heartening to see that […]
One of the great things about living in Los Angeles is that the awards shows start and end at reasonable hours. The trade-off is that the Oscar nominations are announced at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am Pacific Time (timed so that the east coast-based morning shows can carry the news), and I’m already thinking way too much about them before the sun has even come up. But, at last, we have our 10 best picture nominees in Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners and Train Dreams—a solid lineup if […]
Chicken & Egg Films, the Brooklyn-based organization that champions women and gender-expansive documentary filmmakers with funding, mentorship, and access, announces today the grantees of its 2026 (Egg)celerator Lab. Nine feature documentary film projects, all helmed or co-helmed by first- or second-time directors, will receive one year of professional mentorship and a $40,000 production grant. Coinciding with the 2026 (Egg)celerator Lab announcement is news that C&E will, for the first time in the organization’s history, host its signature retreats in Canada. Per a press release, this decision was “in response to the fact that travel to the United States has grown […]
Jordan Lage is an award-winning actor, writer, director and founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company, which celebrates its 41st anniversary this year. He studied acting at New York University under the tutelage of playwright David Mamet and actor William H. Macy and then taught acting and playwriting at the Atlantic Theater Acting School for nearly 30 years. Best known for his work performing the plays of David Mamet’s, he has acted in multiple productions of the author’s works on Broadway, off-Broadway & regionally, including American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-The-Plow, and Oleanna, among others. On this episode, he talks about how his […]
Making an appearance on DC’s, the blog of author Dennis Cooper, each October are haunted houses and their amateur offspring, “home haunts,” the Halloween home makeovers that with varying degrees of imagination turn suburban dwellings into highly personal expressions of horror . For Cooper, the acclaimed author of works such as Closer, Frisk, God, Jr., The Marble Swarm and The Sluts, these necessarily ephemeral stagings are a particular kind of outsider art, which makes their cataloguing each year on Cooper’s website a work of invaluable archiving; they are installations in dialogue with American horror movie iconography in which such figures […]
Today is the last day of Oscar nominations voting, which brings an end to “phase one” of campaigning. With the noms being announced next Thursday, January 22—at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m. PT—there will be barely enough time to relax before things kick into full gear once again. Now, I can’t imagine being an Academy member and waiting a whole week to fill out my ballot. But unlike us pundits, most voters haven’t spent the last few months obsessively tracking dozens of movies they did not work on. Academy members are hopefully busy making other movies! I can also […]
The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival announces the lineup for its 23rd annual incarnation today, and Filmmaker has an exclusive early look at the 46 features and 69 short and mini docs slated for inclusion. Montana’s largest annual cinematic event will roar back to life in Missoula from February 13 through 22, and this year’s program features a slew of world premieres, along with a large handful of films set to debut at Sundance later this month, among them Brydie O’Connor’s Barbara Forever, Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig’s Jaripeo, Rachael J. Morrison’s Joybubbles, and Sam Green’s The Oldest Person in […]
Carolyn Michelle is an actress, producer, educator, and entrepreneur. Her credits include: Brilliant Minds, And Just Like That, The Chi, Russian Doll, House of Cards, and the role of Vanessa, opposite Kathleen Chalfant’s Ruth, in Sarah Friedland’s celebrated indie film Familiar Touch. On this episode, she talks about her deep roots with that project, and what she told Friedland she needed to bring that character to life. She takes us back to her earliest days as an actor, and the mentor whose influence is still felt today. Carolyn has served as co-director of Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Mentorship Lab, and […]