NYFF Lineup Announced for 2022

by Nathaniel R

Jeremy Pope is a gay marine in "The Inspection"

The 60th Annual New York Film Festival runs September 30th through October 16th (passes are already on sale) and as per usual the festival will have a couple of premieres but the bulk of titles are cherry-picked from the Big Five: Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Sundance, and Toronto. Because of that practice this is a superb festival to catch up with if you don't have the funds to travel to the other festivals. And on that note, disappointment for those hoping for / expecting Tchaikovsky's Wife, Broker, Close, Women Talking or The Fabelmans (a.k.a. me!). But perhaps there will be last minute additions? After the jump the main slate titles this year....

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A queer-leaning Venice Critics Week

by Nathaniel R

Three Nights a Week

The titles have been announced for one of the exciting sidebars at Venice. Critics Week is for feature debuts for emerging filmmakers. That means they're eligible for the Lion of the Future prize, determined by a jury from all debuts across the festival. What's more at least three of these titles are queer films so maybe the Queer Lion will be competitive this year, too! As with the Lion of the Future prize, all sections of the festival counts so a special jury chooses The Queer Lion after screening the qualifying films (in this case anything LGBTQ themed). Venice runs August 31st through September 10th, 2022. Once again this year Elisa Giudici will be covering Venice for us...

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TIFF Lineup 2022 - Galas & Special Presentations

by Nathaniel R

Kelvin Harrison Jr stars in "Chevalier"

The Toronto International Film Festival runs September 8th through 18th this year. Of "the Big Five" festivals (the others being Berlinale, Cannes, Sundance, and Venice) Toronto doesn't have a traditional competition lineup with juries... though their audience award winners tend to get a lot of "Oscar-bound" style press. Like those other festivals they having very exciting lineups for cinephiles. If the titles showing at Venice (which happens just before it) and TIFF are as enticing as they sound, 2022 is going to explode in cinematic quality. What follows is a list of their Galas and Special Presentations though it's worth noting that TIFF usually has hundreds of movies so this is only the two most high profile programs that they've announced. 

GALA PRESENTATIONS

These are the high profile films, usually with movie stars, that are getting the full red carpet glitzy treatment. Usually they're either World Premieres or Canadian premieres of major titles that premiered in Europe...

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Venice 2022: The "Tár" Tease and the Competition Lineup

by Nathaniel R

Cate Blanchett in TÁR

Most sites just give you a list of film titles but we always aim to provide you with more information which is one of the (several) reasons we're slower with the news! Over 50% of the competition titles at Venice this year come from just three countries: France, Italy, and the US and a lot of titles are connected to Netflix. Outside of those countries we get one film from Asia, one from the Middle East, two from South America, and two from UK/Ireland. If you include the Out of Competition titles there's more variety with Canada, Denmark, Ukraine, The Phillipines, and Estonia entering the chat.

After the jump a little bit about each of the 22 films competing for the Golden Lion, and a few of the Out of Competition films including the new Lars Von Trier. Plus that bewitching teaser to Tár, Todd Field's first film in 16 years...

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Julianne Moore to preside over the competition jury at Venice

by Nathaniel R

Julianne at the Met Gala. Image: AFP/Angela Weiss

Exciting news to report. Julianne Moore, who originally inspired my own career writing about film and thus this website, will lead the jury at the 79th annual Venice International Film Festival. The festival runs August 31st-September 10th so expect lots of Julianne gowns this summer. What a nice full circle monent this will be for the Oscar winning actress. She's a previous winner of the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for Far From Heaven (2002) and this year she'll help determine who wins that same prize twenty years later. Penélope Cruz took the prize last season for her work in Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers which helped pave the way to her fourth Oscar nomination... 

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