Hou Hsiao-hsien is a retired Mainland Chinese-born Taiwanese film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a leading figure in world cinema and in Taiwan's New Wave cinema movement. He won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1989 for his film A City of Sadness (1989), and the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 for The Assassin (2015). Other highly regarded works of his include The Puppetmaster (1993) and Flowers of Shanghai (1998).
Rajesh Touchriver is an Indian film director, screenwriter, and producer known for his works in English, Malayalam, Telugu, and Hindi language films. He received various National and International honors for his works. In 2002 he directed In the Name of Buddha which was later screened in the Spotlight on India section at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. In 2013, he scripted, and directed the social problem film Naa Bangaaru Talli which won five International honors, the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Telugu, and four state Nandi awards including Second Best Feature Film.
The Bangkok International Film Festival (BKKIFF) is an international film festival held annually in Bangkok, Thailand, since 2003. In addition to film screenings, seminars, gala events and the Golden Kinnaree Awards.
Reykjavík International Film Festival is an international film festival held annually in Reykjavík, Iceland. The festival lasts 11 days each year and emphasizes young talents. One way of doing so is having a competitive category exclusively limited to a director's first or second feature-length film. At each festival, a number of awards are given out. The main award is the Discovery of the Year award, also called Golden Puffin, given by an international jury. The international federation of film critics FIPRESCI send a jury to RIFF from 2006. Also, the audience can vote for their favorite film from the whole programme. Lifetime achievement awards and creative excellence awards are given to well-known film directors who have achieved excellence in their work.
Flavio Pimenta Alves is a Brazilian writer, screenwriter, and film director resident in America since 1998. His movies consistently feature elderly characters as protagonists. He is best known for the film The Garden Left Behind starring Michael Madsen, Ed Asner and Carlie Guevara.
A Prophet is a 2009 French prison crime film directed by Jacques Audiard with a screenplay by Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit, from a story by Dafri. The film stars Tahar Rahim in the title role as an imprisoned petty criminal of Algerian origin who rises in the prison hierarchy, becoming a mob associate and drug trafficker as he is absorbed into the Corsican mafia and then ingratiates himself into the Maghrebi crime syndicate.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival takes place every January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
A Single Man is a 2009 American period romantic drama film based on the 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood. The directorial debut of fashion designer Tom Ford, the film stars Colin Firth, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of George Falconer, a depressed gay British university professor living in Southern California in 1962.
Land Gold Women is a 2011 British-Indian film written and directed by Avantika Hari, a graduate of the London Film School. The film is produced by Mumbai-based Vivek Agrawal. It is the first film in English that deals with the issue of honor killings. The film won India’s National Film Award for Best Feature Film in English, which was shared between Hari and Agrawal. The award was presented by the President of India, Pratibha Patil.
Deeper and Deeper is a 2010 American erotic psychological thriller written by Cyndi Williams and directed by Polish-American filmmaker Mariusz Kotowski.
Gerald is a 2010 American comedy-drama film written, produced and edited by Tim Gallagher, directed by Marc Clebanoff, and stars Louis Mandylor and Mackenzie Firgens with Deborah Theaker and Mickey Rooney. The main character, Gerald, was inspired by Forrest Gump, Seymour Krelborn of Little Shop of Horrors and Mr. Gallagher's personal experience with mentally challenged individuals.
Holy Motors is a 2012 surrealist fantasy drama film written and directed by Leos Carax and starring Denis Lavant and Édith Scob. Lavant plays Mr. Oscar, a man who appears to have a job as an actor, as he is seen dressing up in different costumes and performing various roles in several locations around Paris over the course of a day, though no cameras or audiences are ever seen around him. The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.
Pablo Larraín Matte is a Chilean filmmaker. He is known for directing films such as No (2012), Neruda (2016), Jackie (2016), Spencer (2021), El Conde (2023), and Maria (2024). Larraín and his brother Juan de Dios co-produced Sebastián Lelio's A Fantastic Woman (2017), which was the first Chilean film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2021, Larrain directed the Apple TV+ psychological romance horror miniseries Lisey's Story.
Fruitvale Station is a 2013 American biographical drama film written and directed by Ryan Coogler. It is Coogler's feature directorial debut, and is based on the events leading to the death of Oscar Grant, a young man killed in 2009 by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale district BART station in Oakland, California. The film stars Michael B. Jordan as Grant, with Kevin Durand and Chad Michael Murray playing the two BART police officers involved in Grant's death, although their names were changed for the film. Melonie Diaz, Ahna O'Reilly, and Octavia Spencer also star.
The Salesman is a 2016 Iranian-French drama film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi and starring Taraneh Alidoosti and Shahab Hosseini. It is about a married couple who perform Arthur Miller's 1949 play Death of a Salesman on stage. When the wife is assaulted, her husband attempts to determine the identity of the attacker, while she struggles to cope with post-trauma stress. Farhadi chose Miller's play as his story within a story based on shared themes. A co-production between Iran and France, the film was shot in Tehran, beginning in 2015.
Roma is a 2018 drama film written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who also produced, shot, and co-edited it. Set in 1970 and 1971, Roma follows the life of a live-in indigenous (Mixteco) housekeeper of an upper-middle-class Mexican family. It is a semi-autobiographical take on Cuarón's upbringing in Mexico City's Colonia Roma neighborhood. The film stars Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira. It is an international co-production between Mexico and the United States.
Titane is a 2021 body horror psychological drama film written and directed by Julia Ducournau. The French-Belgian co-production stars Agathe Rousselle in her feature film debut as Alexia, a woman who, after being injured in a car crash as a child, has a titanium plate fitted into her head. In adulthood, Alexia becomes a murderous car model with an erotic fascination with automobiles, leading to a bizarre sexual encounter that sets off an increasingly outlandish series of events. Vincent Lindon, Garance Marillier and Laïs Salameh also star.
Flee is a 2021 independent adult animated documentary film directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen. An international co-production with Denmark, France, Norway, and Sweden, it follows the story of a man under the alias Amin Nawabi, who shares his hidden past of fleeing his home country of Afghanistan to Denmark for the first time. Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau serve as executive producers and narrators for the English-language dub version.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a 2022 American biographical documentary film about photographer, artist, and activist Nan Goldin. The film is produced, co-edited and directed by Laura Poitras, and tackles Goldin's life through her advocacy during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 80's, and her fight against the Sackler family for their role in the current opioid epidemic in the United States. Poitras, a long-time friend and fan, stated that "Nan's art and vision has inspired my work for years, and has influenced generations of filmmakers."
Sometime, Somewhere is a 2023 Argentine-American documentary film written and directed by Ricardo Preve. The feature documentary tells the story of a group of Hispanic and Latin American immigrants in Charlottesville, Virginia: who they are and why they left their homes, what happened to them when they arrived in the United States, and what are their hopes for the future.
