Latest in Festivals

Wild Bunch International, an independent subsidiary of European film, TV and media group Wild Bunch, has made four internal promotions just as the virtual AFM gets into gear. The sales company, which was formed as part of a reorganization last year, remains under the management of Eva Diederix. WBI has notably named…

Giona A. Nazzaro was today appointed as the new Artistic Director of Switzerland’s historic Locarno Film Festival. He will be tasked with trying to bounce back the event, one of the key European summer film fests, from a pandemic-disrupted year in 2020. Deadline got on the phone with Nazzaro, who joins from his role…

Switzerland's Locarno Film Festival, one of the key events on the European summer fest circuit, has named Italian film critic Giona A. Nazzaro as its new artistic director. Nazzaro joins from Venice Critics’ Week, where he has served as General Delegate since 2016; he will take up his new role on January 1, 2021 but…

The Karlovy Vary film festival has cancelled its four-day IFF 54½ film event, which was due to take place November 18-21, due to new coronavirus restrictions in the Czech Republic. Organizers had assembled a variety of titles hailing from Sundance, Berlin, Venice and San Sebastian, in addition to some with the Cannes…

The Palm Springs International Film Festival Society said Monday that it has canceled its 32nd annual Palm Springs Film Festival that had most recently been scheduled for February 25-March 8, 2021. The organizers did say that the fest’s annual Film Awards gala will still take place as planned. Unlike the virtual or…

Organizers of the New York Film Festival, whose 58th edition faced a welter of complications due to COVID-19, said attendance across virtual and drive-in screenings rose more than 9% over 2019 levels. With drive-in theaters set up in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens and state health restrictions idling the Film at Lincol…

Although the 73rd edition of the Cannes Film Festival was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, organizers opted to showcase four films that were part of the 2020 Official Selection from Tuesday through Thursday this week, calling it "Spécial Cannes." It also got in just under the wire as France imposed another…

The Cannes Film Festival’s "Spécial" three-day event kicked off at the Palais this evening with the Lumière theater at half capacity, and fest chief Thierry Fremaux urging attendees to “applaud at 100%.” They did, despite muted proceedings given the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. Earlier this year, the 73rd edition of the…

Johnny Depp will head to Poland virtually next month to pick up a special acting award at the 28th edition of the Camerimage festival. The event, running November 14-21 in the city of Torun, will close with a screening of Andrew Levitas' Depp-starring drama Minamata, which features the actor as celebrated photographer…

AFI Fest on Friday announced the winners of its jury and audience awards, with marquee honors going to Secret of Kells duo Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart’s animated Wolfwalkers, which won the audience award for narrative feature, and 76 Days, the documentary about the first days of the COVID-19 virus in China, taking the…

For at least some of us who lived through the counter-culture/psychedelic era of the late '60s and early '70s, Timothy Leary was one of the most annoying or, at least, equivocal figures of a time that hardly lacked for colorful characters. The most famous utterance of this often articulate, madly attention-seeking…

It's the rare documentary film premiere that triggers worldwide headlines, but that's what has happened with Evgeny Afineevsky's Francesco. The film about Pope Francis debuted at the Rome Film Festival today and first the Catholic press and then secular media picked up on something the pope told Afineevsky in the…