Month: January 2025

Fifty years ago today, 18-year-old Vera Brandes organized a concert for jazz pianist Keith Jarrett in Cologne, West Germany, which went on to make music history: a recording of the concert became the best-selling solo jazz album ever as well as the best-selling piano recording ever. Now director Ido Fluk and producers Sol Bondy and

“Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” which has its world premiere on Saturday in the World Cinema Documentary Competition section of the Sundance Film Festival, delivers an insider’s view of the impact of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine on the lives of Russia’s children. Variety spoke to the film’s director, David Borenstein, who worked alongside Pavel “Pasha”

One of the most dehumanizing features — which is certainly a built-in component and not a bug — of the U.S. immigration system as it pertains to asylum seekers is that the applicant bears the burden of proving they have suffered enough or that they risk death in their home country in order to be

Based on the real-life experiences of co-writer and co-executive producer Nathaniel Deen, who appears at the end to bestow his approval on the dramatization and invite the audience to take its lessons to heart, “Brave the Dark” is a low-key inspirational indie that sensitively elicits empathy and sympathy without ever pushing too hard or simplifying

“Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)” is a dazzling and definitive funk-pop documentary. It’s the second “jawn” directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, and he has leveled up from his first, “Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” — though that lyrical-flashback-to-1969-in-Harlem concert film, in its way, was beautiful. In

After nearly four decades of its one-child policy, designed to curb population growth and reform the country’s economy, China has fully removed all childrearing limits in recent years. But the cultural repercussions will be felt for generations to come, even (and especially) in the swiping apps hounded by modern singles. Violet Du Feng’s documentary “The

Most fairy tales were told and retold countless times before Walt Disney ever got his hands on them, and yet, the sensibility behind such animated classics as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Sleeping Beauty” has proven so popular on such an international scale that few know these stories’ darker origins. The family-friendly studio’s

In James Sweeney’s wise and disarmingly funny second feature, “Twinless,” two men meet in an emotional support group for those who’ve lost an identical sibling. That seems as good a place as any to talk about codependency, although it’s actually the even more universal subject of loneliness that animates Sweeney’s insightful coping comedy, which premiered

“Does it get more Sundance than this?” Eugene Hernandez, the festival’s director, said at the opening night premiere of “Twinless,” which was being unveiled Thursday at the Eccles, Park City’s biggest venue. But the evening didn’t go off without a hitch. Shortly after Hernandez left the stage, a sizzle reel promoting the festival’s nonprofit arm

In her documentary “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” the star continues to explore the at times lonesome space she has occupied since bursting on the scene in 1986: that of being a representative for deaf people, and being herself. For more than three decades, Matlin was the only deaf performer to have won an Oscar,

Four years ago, Oscar winner Marlee Matlin experienced the magic of a Sundance premiere virtually when the heartfelt indie “CODA” made its debut at the fest (it then sold for $25 million to Apple on the way to winning the Oscar for best picture). But this year, Matlin gets to enjoy Sundance in-person with the

As Russia’s unconscionable war on Ukraine wears on, the local and global response to it has shifted from shock to fury to numbed despair — and the already substantial library of documentaries made in response to it has likewise varied in focus and tenor. Two years ago, Ukrainian journalist and filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov premiered “20

Bollywood star Randeep Hooda is set to reunite with “Extraction” director Sam Hargrave for Apple Original Films’ upcoming action thriller “Matchbox,” marking their second collaboration following their 2020 Netflix hit. The live-action film, based on Mattel’s die-cast matchbox toy vehicle line, stars John Cena, Teyonah Parris, Jessica Biel and Sam Richardson. Production is currently underway in Budapest,

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival just days after Trump clarified his Make America Great Again agenda, Sophie Hyde’s “Jimpa” is a film about progress, not going back. Inspired by lessons of living with an activist gay father (John Lithgow’s richest role since “The World According to Garp”) and a nonbinary child (Aud Mason-Hyde), the

It’s no secret that corporations like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple have lost their appetite for current event documentaries that tackle politics. The good old days when streamers shelled out seven figures for docus about polarizing politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“Knock Down the House”), and eye-opening mock-government teen conferences (“Boys State”) after their Sundance debuts are

Lionsgate’s advertising campaign for “Flight Risk” credits its latest film to “the award-winning director of ‘Braveheart,’ ‘Apocalypto’ and ‘Hacksaw Ridge’,” which seems a circumspect way of recognizing Mel Gibson as its helmer. Unfortunately, the movie’s problem is not that it lacks Gibson’s name, but his personality as a filmmaker. Reminding audiences of those very good

In the moving Sundance drama “Omaha,” the bedsheets are still warm when the life of a family is thrown into disarray on the morning they are mandated to vacate their home. The mother’s passing and the 2008 financial collapse contributed to the precariousness that’s put them in this predicament. Few belongings will accompany them on

Hollywood is heading up the mountain for what’s possibly one of the final Sundance Film Festivals to be held in the posh ski-resort town of Park City. It’s a place that’s hosted its fair share of all-night bidding wars, where films ranging from “Reservoir Dogs” and “Napoleon Dynamite” to “Brooklyn” and “The Big Sick” landed

Jamie Foxx recently joined Vanity Fair for a video interview in which he looked back at a handful of his most iconic acting roles, including the title character in Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.” One of the Oscar winner’s most notable memories of the film is when co-star Leonardo DiCaprio cut short a reading of the