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In March 2020, just after New York City shut down due to Covid-19, Matthew Heineman picked up his camera and embedded with a group of healthcare workers at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens. For the next three months, the director and a skeleton crew captured doctors, nurses, and medical technicians as they battled to keep Covid patients alive and the virus at bay at one of the country’s hardest-hit hospitals.

The result of Heineman’s efforts is “The First Wave” – a documentary that will have its world premiere and serve as the opening night film at the 29th Hamptons Intl. Film Festival on Oct. 7.

Besides documenting the devastating physical and emotional impact the pandemic had on hospital staff, the verité film executive produced by Alex Gibney and produced by Leslie Norville and Jenna Millman follows Covid patients who recovered at the hospital for months as well as their family members back home.

Filmmaker Max Lowe was just a kid when his father, the mountaineer Alex Lowe, was killed in an avalanche while climbing in the Tibetan Himalayas. It was a private family tragedy, and yet a public story—Lowe’s death made headlines around the world because he was considered perhaps the greatest mountain climber of his time.

“Alex Lowe, 40, Alpinist, Dies, Swept Away on a Tibet Ascent,” the New York Times reported in October 1999.

The snows entombed Lowe and David Bridges, a 29-year-old cameraman who took part in the expedition organized by North Face, the recreation products company. Conrad Anker, Lowe’s best friend and fellow world-class climber, sustained injuries in the avalanche but survived.

In his new documentary Torn, Max Lowe shares the story of how his father’s death impacted his family, and how Anker came to play an increasingly central role in their lives. The National Geographic doc...

Immediately following premieres of their latest documentaries at major awards-circuit festivals, veteran filmmakers Liz Garbus, Robert Greene and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi headed to a small, remote village on the coast of Maine – two hours from a major airport.

The trio made the trek so they could attend the 17th edition of the Camden Intl. Film Festival. Each brought with them their Oscar-contending docus — “Becoming Cousteau,” “Procession” and “The Rescue,” respectively.

Fresh off showings at Telluride and the Toronto film fests, Garbus’ ‘Becoming Cousteau” kicked off Ciff, which was held in-person Sept. 16-19 and continues online until Sept. 26. During its first weekend, a who’s who of the docu community — including Oscar winner Alex Gibney, Cinetic Media founder and principal John Sloss, former Sundance Institute CEO Keri Putnam, NBC News Studios’ head of documentary Molly O’Brien and Pov executive director Erika Dilday — could be seen at various festival venues in...

Documentaries are front and center at this year’s Telluride Film Festival, far more than usual, with 18 new releases in the main program (not classics) and a total of four from NatGeo Documentary Films. How did that happen? NatGeo is no stranger to quality nonfiction, from Oscar, BAFTA, and Emmy-winning “Free Solo” to Oscar-nominated Syria-under-siege documentary “The Cave.”

For one thing, one of the films booked for last year’s canceled festival is in the 2021 selection, as Tff co-director Julie Huntsinger welcomed rookie filmmaker Max Lowe back with “Torn,” the true story of a family hit hard by the loss of his father, legendary mountaineer Alex Lowe, killed in a Tibet avalanche in 1999.

Much like Bing Liu’s Oscar-winning “Minding the Gap,” “Torn” explores untapped emotions as Lowe seeks answers to complex and uncharted family dynamics, helped by his younger brothers, his mother, and her second husband, his father’s mountain partner,...

15 years after moving away from his home in Serbia, director Nikola Ilić settled down and found a girl in Switzerland, eventually marrying his wife and filmmaking partner Corina Schwingruber Ilić. Since then his life has been divided between two countries and three women, his wife, his mother Anđica (“Dida”) and grandmother Dobrila Spasić (“Baba”). Dida has learning disabilities and is reliant on her own aging mother Baba, who is increasingly incapable of providing the care needed.

Torn, Nikola began documenting his struggle between the two worlds, and his desires to ensure his mother is cared for while not giving up what he has built in Switzerland. It’s a story that so many immigrants have dealt with, exacerbated by his mother’s condition. However, while the Ilić family’s struggles are the core of the film’s narrative, “Dida,” world premiering in the Burning Lights competition at this year’s Visions du Reél festival,...

With a nod to Robert Donat’s Richard Hannay in Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps and an unintended wink to a bus trip in Torn Curtain with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, Andy Goddard’s Six Minutes To Midnight (co-written with Eddie Izzard and Celyn Jones) conjures up moments from cinema history. Leontine Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform from 1931 may come to mind and when the German girls at the Augusta-Victoria College are singing in the staircase, The Sound Of Music is in the air.

The tautly wound historical thriller stars Eddie Izzard and Judi Dench with Carla Juri (of Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 and Frauke Finsterwalder’s Finsterworld), Jim Broadbent, Celyn Jones, Maria Dragus (of Michael Haneke’s White Ribbon and Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation), James D’Arcy, David Schofield, and Tijan Marei. Shot crisply by Chris Seager (Goddard’s Set Fire To The Stars,...

Ava Max has released a new single, “My Head and My Heart,” and if you’re thinking that you’ve heard the melody before, you’re probably right: The song heavily interpolates the Eurodance hit “Around the World (La La La La La),” popularized by Atc in 1999.

Over the sing-song hook featured in “Around the World,” Ava Max calls upon an old flame to repair her broken heart: “My head and my heart, I’m tortured really, yeah/That’s my mind in your arms, I go to extremes, yeah...

Three weeks after a spike in coronavirus cases forced the Telluride Film Festival team to cancel its 2020 event, organizers have announced the lineup that would have been.

“The Show,” as the festival refers to its annual feature program, planned to include “Ammonite,” a love story co-starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan; “The Rider” director Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland”; contemporary Western “Concrete Cowboy” with Idris Elba; and Roger Michell’s heist movie “The Duke,” with Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent — all four of which will make their premieres at Venice or Toronto instead.

But many of the films in the documentary-heavy lineup were not selected for either of those festivals, which explains why Telluride executive director Julie Huntsinger felt it was important to share their selections. The Telluride team typically keeps their selections secret until the day before the festival, which takes place over Labor Day weekend in the small Colorado community.

It was announced last month that the Telluride Film Festival made the decision to cancel their event this year due to the ongoing pandemic and the more intimate nature of their festival. As Cannes did earlier this summer, they’ve now gone ahead and revealed what would’ve screened at this year’s edition.

Featuring tributes to Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins, and Chloé Zhao, their new films were set to screen––Ammonite, The Father, and Nomadland, respectively––as well as new work by Werner Herzog, Liz Garbus, Gia Coppola, Gianfranco Rosi, and more. There was also a new documentary featuring interviews by Tarkovsky titled Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer.

“I know other festivals can do this and will pull it off great, and it’s very beneficial to their individual communities,” executive director Julie Huntsinger told THR. “But what we do is so about human intimacy. For us, it’s that alchemy.

“We still want to… bring attention to these brilliant films.”

The Telluride Film Festival, which was supposed to run September 3-7 but was cancelled due to Covid-19, has revealed the films that would’ve been selected this year.

“Though we aren’t able to present our program in-person as planned, we still want to announce the lineup to bring attention to these brilliant films,” said Telluride executive director Julie Huntsinger. “We’ve listed everything we know about screening opportunities so that audiences may watch as many of these films as possible. The festival will continue to do everything in its...

There will be no Telluride Film Festival this Labor Day in Colorado, but the programmers have unveiled what this year’s selections would have been. Much like the Cannes Film Festival’s 2020 lineup, this year’s Telluride films can at least carry the imprimatur of the festival as we head into the fall circuit. The 47th edition of the Telluride Film Festival was scheduled for September 3-7. See the full lineup, as revealed on Monday, below.

The idea in presenting the Telluride selections is to recommend the best in film this year in hopes that audiences will seek out these movies at other fall festivals (or what remains of them) down the line. With the 2021 Academy Awards pushed way out to April 25, there’s at once less pressure on these films to perform for awards but also a crush of movies backlogged since quarantine hit, making for a competitive season.

The Kangaroo last appeared on “The Masked Singer” way back on February 12. Back then she made the Top 3 in Group A. On the April 1 episode, she and the other two remaining contestants from Group A joined the trio of talent from each of Group B and Group C. They took to the stage as the Super 9.

Of these nine contenders for the Golden Mask, the Kangaroo has one of the strongest voices. She has impressed the four judges with each of her performances: a lively version of Robyn‘s dance hit “Dancing On My Own”; the Amy Winehouse classic “You Know I’m No Good”; and Rihanna‘s chart-topping “Diamonds.”

See ‘The Masked Singer’ spoilers: The Astronaut is …

Since mid-February, we’ve been re-watching these performances by the Kangaroo as well as her three clues videos. Keep reading if you want to know as we have all “The Masked Singer” spoilers,...

Ava Max accepts her pop crown on her new song, “Kings and Queens,” the first single from the singer’s upcoming debut album, expected to arrive later this year.

Produced by regular collaborator Cirkut, “Kings and Queens” boasts a pulsing verse and a dramatic hook peppered with regal synths — there’s even a guitar solo that has a distinctive Queen-esque quality to it. The track finds Max delivering a message of female empowerment with a big voice and a few clever winks as she sings, “No damsel in distress, don...