‘Ponyboi’ Producer Mark Ankner Sees Film Festivals as the ‘Only Voice to Push’ Diverse Stories Forward

‘Ponyboi’ Producer Mark Ankner Sees Film Festivals as the ‘Only Voice to Push’ Diverse Stories Forward

Film and television producer Mark Anker, whose film “Ponyboi,” made its premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, says independent filmmaking and film festivals are crucial to bringing diverse stories to the screen, particularly when Hollywood studios can’t be depended upon to do the work.

The status of film festivals has long been associated with helping filmmakers and audiences come together to experience and learn about new projects, as well as providing independent films with a boost of clout in their efforts to get sold to big-name studios. Their purpose, and how they’ve served the lifecycle of projects being produced,

Focus Features Acquires 2024 Sundance-Award Winner Dìdi (弟弟) from Oscar-Nominated Filmmaker Sean Wang

Focus Features Acquires 2024 Sundance-Award Winner Dìdi (弟弟) from Oscar-Nominated Filmmaker Sean Wang

Focus Features Acquires 2024 Sundance-Award Winner Dìdi (弟弟) from Oscar-Nominated Filmmaker Sean Wang

Feature directorial debut from recent Academy Award-nominee follows an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy in a coming-of-age tale set in the late 2000’s and was awarded two of the festival’s top prizes.

Focus Features has acquired the worldwide rights to Dìdi(弟弟) following its premiere in competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it received critical and audience acclaim, winning both the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast.

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16 Best Films From Sundance Film Festival 2024

16 Best Films From Sundance Film Festival 2024

Writing teen characters earnestly, without a patronizing grown-up lens, is tricky business. But as she did in her debut The Fallout, writer-director Megan Park makes it look easy. In her gentle hands, My Old Ass’s vivacious and confident Elliott (Maisy Stella, sensational) is as authentic as they come, as a spirited college-bound teen spending one last summer in her Canadian lakeside town. Park’s sophomore feature is sweet, locally specific, funny, and gradually heartbreaking in the most inventive fashion (bring tissues), one that maturely celebrates girlhood and young romance shame-free, with disarming sincerity. There is a tiny

Christopher Nolan Wants to Make ‘Large-Scale’ Movies Over Indies – IndieWire

Christopher Nolan Wants to Make ‘Large-Scale’ Movies Over Indies – IndieWire

Christopher Nolan is voicing his love of indie films while explaining why he’s unlikely to make another one.

The “Oppenheimer” writer-director, who got his start with indies “Following” and “Memento,” told Time magazine that he feels a “responsibility” to the filmmaking community to safeguard “large scale” resources and push the boundaries of technology onscreen.

“I’m drawn to working at a large scale because I know how fragile the opportunity to marshal those resources is,” Nolan said. “I know that there are so many filmmakers out there in the world who would give their eye teeth to have

Newen Connect, Yellow Affair Create New International Sales Label (EXCLUSIVE)

Newen Connect, Yellow Affair Create New International Sales Label (EXCLUSIVE)

Newen Connect has signed a pact with international sales company The Yellow Affair to have the company handle global distribution for independent films produced by Newen Studios.

Newen Studios and Yellow Affair are already related though Anagram, which is label of Newen and a shareholder Yellow Affair, along with Visiorex, Helsinki-filmi and Marianna Films. Newen, meanwhile, is owned by France’s leading commercial network group. The European banner handles co-production, co-financing and international sales through its commercial arm, Newen Connect.

More from Variety

Unveiled during the Goteborg Film Festival, the three-year deal will see Newen Connect continue handling

What Makes A24 Films Successful

What Makes A24 Films Successful

Read Time:10 Minute, 7 Second

A24's Everything Everywhere All at Once Hot Dog Hands

Acclaimed films gathering mass popularity including Hereditary, Midsommar, and Everything Everywhere All at Once, each have one common denominator: a distributor with enough sense to produce an entertaining story. A24 provides an edge that makes their films more successful than competitors. Most independent and non-independent distributors have triumphed in following a standard formulaic structure. A dated approach that only focuses on exhausted concepts that ‘work’ with minimal promotional campaigns. This

The Seeding Alternate Ending Revealed for Horror Movie – The Hollywood Reporter

The Seeding Alternate Ending Revealed for Horror Movie – The Hollywood Reporter

Independent filmmaking is not for the faint of heart, and writer-director Barnaby Clay just spent eight years learning that lesson en route to his first narrative feature, The Seeding

Clay began his directorial career in music videos for artists such as Rihanna, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Gnarls Barkley, as well as short films and documentaries, like the Mick Rock doc, SHOT! Stories of directors making the jump from music videos to feature films used

‘The Seeding’ Filmmaker Barnaby Clay Talks the Challenges of Indie Horror and the Roads Not Taken

‘The Seeding’ Filmmaker Barnaby Clay Talks the Challenges of Indie Horror and the Roads Not Taken

Independent filmmaking is not for the faint of heart, and writer-director Barnaby Clay just spent eight years learning that lesson en route to his first narrative feature, The Seeding.

Clay began his directorial career in music videos for artists such as Rihanna, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Gnarls Barkley, as well as short films and documentaries, like the Mick Rock doc, Shot! Stories of directors making the jump from music videos to feature films used to be more common when music videos were not only as visible

The Music Hall in Portsmouth Takes The Reins of New Hampshire Film Festival

The Music Hall in Portsmouth Takes The Reins of New Hampshire Film Festival

New Hampshire’s most successful independent film festival is joining the nonprofit Music Hall organization – positioning the festival for further growth 

Portsmouth, New Hampshire – As the New Hampshire Film Festival (NHFF) plans for its 22nd annual event, Founding Director Nicole Gregg announced that the NHFF will now be run by The Music Hall, the nonprofit organization that brings diverse performing arts and film programming to New Hampshire. Gregg says the current longtime festival team will remain in place but that she will step back as the festival’s Executive Director, with The Music Hall’s Executive Director, Tina Sawtelle,

The 50 Best Movies on Max Right Now

The 50 Best Movies on Max Right Now

When HBO Max debuted in May 2020, subscribers rightfully expected (and got) the formidable catalog of prestige television associated with the HBO brand. But its movie library drew from a much deeper well. Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO, is a huge conglomerate, and its premiere streaming service comprises decades of titles from Warner Bros., Turner Classic Movies, Studio Ghibli and more. Viewed in that light, its recent rebranding as Max seems fitting.

That means a lot of large-scale fantasy series like Harry Potter and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and

Is Sundance Playing It Safe?

Is Sundance Playing It Safe?

This year’s edition of Sundance concluded yesterday, and, though I saw some films of great merit there, I also found myself thinking about the peculiar cinematic economy that the festival fosters. This was partly because, the day before Sundance ended, I’d taken part in a panel discussion about the great French critic Serge Daney (1944-92), as part of the Film at Lincoln Center’s series devoted to his work. The series celebrates the first appearance in English of his 1983 book, “Footlights”; the book’s translator, Nicholas Elliott, was also on the panel,

Sundance Film Festival Ends With Plenty of Sales, Despite Slow Start

Sundance Film Festival Ends With Plenty of Sales, Despite Slow Start

Talk of the demise of the Sundance Film Festival as an incubator for audience-friendly independent films appears to have been greatly exaggerated.

When titles from this year’s 40th anniversary festival weren’t flying off the shelves by the third day of screenings, some observers saw it as yet another sign that Hollywood was in dire straits. The festival was no longer featuring independent films that could go on to be commercially viable, the thinking went.

Yet when the festival concluded over the weekend, it appeared that

Park Record Studio highlights from the 2024 festival season

Park Record Studio highlights from the 2024 festival season

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