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Canadian actor-brothers Shamier Anderson (John Wick 4) and Stephan James (If Beale Street Could Talk) had their stars unveiled on Scarborough’s Walk of Fame. The men were raised in the marginalized Toronto community by a single mother who emigrated to Canada from Jamaica.

“It’s really humbling and flattering to receive something like this in my hometown, at a mall where I grew up, where I shopped, it’s pretty cool,” Anderson told The Hollywood Reporter.

The local Walk of Fame honor for the fast-rising Hollywood stars is more than an exercise in collective positive thinking for an inner-city neighborhood that earlier brought to the world celebrities like Mike Myers, Jim Carrey and The Weeknd.

The brothers are at work via their Bay Mills Studios production banner — named after the community housing project they grew up in Scarborough — on a landmark TV drama set in the inner-city community that is their home away from Hollywood.

“I of the Water,” one of 20 projects presented at Hot Docs’ marquee market event, the Forum, has won the First Look first prize of Can. $50,000, one of four pitch prizes announced Wednesday at the festival.

Kimberlee Bassford’s “I of the Water” focuses on acclaimed Samoan writer Sia Figiel. After a painful experience pushes Figiel into self-exile, she untangles her complicated past, revealing hidden trauma and initiating a journey toward healing. The film is produced by Bassford, Marilyn McFadyen, Vilsoni Hereniko, Leanne K. Ferrer, Cheryl Hirasa, and Linda Goldstein Knowlton.

The second First Look prize, worth Can. $15,000, was awarded to Kenya-Jade Pinto “The Sandbox,” a Canadian production with a vague tagline: “Your future is being written in the sand.” The doc is produced by Shasha Nakhai, Kenya-Jade Pinto, Jennifer Baichwal, and Rich Williamson.

First Look prizes are financed by members of Hot Docs First Look, a curated access program for...

The 14th Annual Santa Fe International Film Festival has announced its juried award winners for the event which has run from Oct. 19-23.

More than 100 filmmakers have traveled to the Land of Enchantment state to show off their cinematic wares.

Says SFiFF Artistic Director Jacques Paisner, “We play strange movies, small movies and foreign films, and the audience is keen on a chance to see something they wouldn’t otherwise experience.”

Courtesy of Santa Fe International Film Festival A scene from Godfrey Reggios Once Within a Time.

Receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award tonight is Qatsi trilogy filmmaker Godfrey Reggio who is here with his new documentary, scored by longtime collaborator Phillip Glass and edited by Jon Kane, Once Within a Time. The pic is billed as a “fantasy of the real with themes of climate change and the perils of technology, and their effects on future generations. It is geared...

CTV’s “Transplant” led television honors at the Canadian Screen Awards with eight wins including best drama series, best lead actor, drama series for Hamza Haq and best lead actress, drama series for Laurence Leboeuf.

The final season of CBC’s “Kim’s Convenience” won three Canadian Screen Awards, including Paul Sun-Hyung Lee for best lead actor, comedy; Jean Yoon for best lead actress, comedy; and Andrew Phung for best supporting actor, comedy, marking his fifth win in this category. The award for best comedy series went to CBC’s “Sort Of.”

Film honors were led by Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson’s “Scarborough,” which won eight Canadian Screen Awards including best motion picture, achievement in direction and the John Dunning best first feature film award.

Obsidian Theatre’s “21 Black Futures” led the digital media category with four wins, including best web program or series, fiction, and best lead performance, web...

The Santa Barbara Film Festival unveiled winners for its 37th edition on Saturday morning, bestowing its Audience Choice award to the Irish-language film Róise and Frank.

Juried winners at this year’s festival include Jon-Sesrie Goff’s After Sherman as Best Documentary, and Shawkat Amin Korki’s The Exam (Ezmûn) winning the Jeffrey C. Barbakow Award for best international feature film.

Róise and Frank (Mo ghrá buan), directed by Rachael Moriarty and Peter Murphy, centers on Róise (Brid Ni Neachtain), a widow in mourning who befriends a dog who just might be her late husband reincarnated. The pic earlier this week screened at the Dublin Film Festival where it won the Best Ensemble award.

Overall, this year’s in-person festival attracted 200 films from 54 countries along with its usual A-list of panel galas celebrating the year’s best in film – a traditional stop on the awards circuit. This year included Q...

The inaugural season of CBC and HBO Max series “Sort Of” leads both the television and overall 2022 Canadian Screen Award nominations with 13 nods. CBC’s “Pretty Hard Cases” and CTV Sci-Fi Channel’s “Wynonna Earp” with 11 each, and CBC’s “Coroner” and “Kim’s Convenience” with 10 each are the other leading television nominees.

The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television revealed on Tuesday 145 nominations across television, film and digital media categories. In film, Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson’s “Scarborough” and Danis Goulet’s “Night Raiders” top the nominations with 11 each, while Michael McGowan’s “All My Puny Sorrows” has eight and Bretten Hannam’s “Wildhood” and Ivan Grbovic’s “Drunken Birds” six each.

“21 Black Futures” and “For the Record” lead the digital media nominations with eight each, followed by “The Communist’s Daughter” with six.

Beth Janson, CEO, Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, said: “We are so fortunate to...

Robin Smith joins company as head of factual content.

Toronto-based distributor levelFILM has acquired KinoSmith and signed a multi-year partnership with Blue Ice Documentary Fund (Bid) to manage the Bid library and partner on new acquisitions.

The transaction will enable the companies to build a more robust distribution partnership for Bid factual production investments. As part of the deal, the KinoSmith library of content and former KinoSmith president and current CEO of Blue Ice Docs Robin Smith will join the levelFILM team.

Smith will act as the company’s head of factual content and oversee the combined entity’s library of documentaries,...

Winner has earned Oscar best picture nomination in last 11 years.

Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast has won the 2021 TIFF People’s Choice audience award in a boost to its award season prospects.

Winners of the award have gone on to garner a best picture Oscar nomination in the past 11 years with last year’s Nomadland and some years prior Green Book and Slumdog Millionaire winning the ultimate prize. Jamie Dornan, Caitriona Balfe, Jude Hill, Judi Dench and Ciarin Hinds star in Northern Ireland-born Branagh’s childhood memoir set during the onset of The Troubles.

‘Belfast’: Review

Scarborough from Shasha Nakhai...

Kenneth Branagh‘s autographical period piece “Belfast” was already the toast of the 2021 Telluride Film Festival earlier this month. Now, its Oscar hopes for a Best Picture nomination now seem assured after capturing the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award. The Focus Features release took the prize over Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson’s “Scarborough,” and Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” which placed second and third respectfully.

Continue reading ‘Belfast’ Gets Oscar Boost With 2021 TIFF People’s Choice Award Win at The Playlist.

Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical, black-and-white drama Belfast claimed the TIFF People’s Choice Award on Saturday night, affirming its status as a major player to contend with in the 2022 Oscars race.

Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye) and Benedict Cumberbatch were also big winners at the TIFF Tribute Awards ceremony, which wrapped up the 46th edition of the festival, claiming its Actor Awards.

The TIFF Ebert Director Award went to Dune‘s Denis Villeneuve, with musician Dionne Warwick (subject of the doc Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over) receiving a Special Tribute Award. Other major titles recognized in Toronto tonight included The Rescue—the latest doc from Free Solo helmers Jimmy Chin and E. Chai Vasarhelyi—and Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winner, Titane.

“2021 brought an exceptional selection of films that excited Festival audiences around the world,...

Kenneth Branagh’s black-and-white drama “Belfast” has won the People’s Choice Award at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF announced on Saturday.

The gentle drama, which is based on Branagh’s childhood growing up in Northern Ireland, won over Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson’s “Scarborough,” a story of three low-income children that finished second, and Jane Campion’s revisionist Western “The Power of the Dog,” which finished third.

In its review of the film from TIFF, TheWrap wrote, “Visually stunning, emotionally wrenching and gloriously human, ‘Belfast’ takes one short period from Branagh’s life and finds in it a coming-of-age story, a portrait of a city fracturing in an instant and a profoundly moving lament for what’s been lost during decades of strife in his homeland of Northern Ireland.”

Other films in competition for the award included “Dear Evan Hansen,” “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” and “The Guilty.

Taking place in the shadows of the Greater Toronto area and a liminal space of poverty, Scarborough isn’t an easy film to shake. A local, low-budget indie premiering in TIFF’s Discovery section, written by Catherine Hernandez (based on her novel) and directed by Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson, the film traces three turbulent childhoods of three families grappling with a system that has set them up to fail and fall through the cracks. Opening with late-night escapes from abusive situations and into housing insecurity, it bursts with a raw immediacy. Shot and edited by co-director Rich Williamson, he brings a Frederick Wiseman-esque sensibility to certain moments within formal institutions—doctors’ offices and a daycare that become a sanctuary beyond their intention.

Scarborough primarily focuses on three young children: Bing (Liam Diaz), a gifted Filipino boy ushered away from his mentally ill father by his loving mother; Laura...

Years ago, Catherine Hernandez would attend the Toronto International Film Festival by ushering in ticket-holders at the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre for a little more than $6 an hour. This year, the author is back at TIFF as something of a celebrity herself, with the worldwide debut of the film “Scarborough.”

When the independent movie screens on Sept. 10, it gives voice to racialized and under-privileged community members in the notorious Toronto suburb, capturing their spirit as they desperately try to keep themselves together under the thumb of a system that’s designed to see them fail. Hernandez penned the script adaptation from her eponymous 2017 award-winning book, which is loosely based on her experiences running a home daycare in Scarborough.

While the novel introduces several character perspectives, the film — for which LevelFilm has picked up Canadian distribution rights — follows three children over the course of one school year. There’s Bing...

BenedictionThe lineup has been unveiled for the 2021 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, which will take place over 10 days (September 9-18) both in-person and physically in Toronto, and digitally across Canada. Wavelengths - FEATURESFutura (Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, Alice Rohrwacher)The Girl and the Spider (Ramon Zürcher, Silvan Zürcher)Neptune Frost (Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman)A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia)Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette)The Tsugua Diaries (Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes)Wavelengths - SHORTSThe Capacity for Adequate Anger (Vika Kirchenbauer)Dear Chantal (Querida Chantal) (Nicolás Pereda)earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto)Inner Outer Space (Laida Lertxundi)Polycephaly in D (Michael Robinson)“The red filter is withdrawn.” (Minjung Kim)Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky)Midnight Madness After Blue (Dirty Paradise) (Bertrand Mandico)Dashcam (Rob Savage)Saloum (Jean Luc Herbulot)Titane (Julia Ducournau)You Are Not My Mother (Kate Dolan)Zalava (Arsalan Amiri)TIFF DOCSAttica (Stanley Nelson)Beba (Rebeca Huntt)Becoming Cousteau...

The Toronto Film Festival on Wednesday unveiled its lineups for the Contemporary World Cinema and Discovery programs as it ramps up toward the kickoff of its 46th edition September 9-18. The festival also solidified additional Gala and Special Presentation titles and took the wraps off TIFF Rewind, a new block that highlights memorable films from previous TIFF editions along with conversations and Q&As with directors and casts.

This comes after the festival last week announced that Dear Evan Hansen will be the opening-night film, while Zhang Yimou’s One Second will close it. It also revealed a portion of the Gala and Special presentation titles that featured films from directors Edgar Wright, Melanie Laurent, Barry Levinson, Antoine Fuqua, Jacques Audiard and Ted Melfi.

Today, TIFF added world premieres for Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky’s The Good House and Camille Griffin’s Silent Night to its Gala lineup, and...

New TIFF Rewind features filmmakers in conversation about memorable selections from the past.

World premieres of Ruth Paxton’s UK horror A Banquet, Agustina San Martín’s Argentinian genre tale To Kill The Beast and Sébastien Pilote’s Canadian period drama Maria Chapdelaine are among Contemporary World Cinema and Discovery selections announced by Toronto International Film festival.

Scroll down for full list of new titles

The festival also unveiled additional Gala and Special Presentations titles, and introduced TIFF Rewind featuring filmmakers in conversation about memorable selections from the past.

Gala screenings include the world premiere of Camille Griffin’s UK...

Here are a bunch of little bites to satisfy your hunger for movie culture:   Prank of the Day: Warner Bros. fooled a bunch of people in New York City with a sudden weather change to promote Geostorm (via Geekologie):   Alternate Sequel of the Day: What if Jurassic Park II was much different and starred Bruce Willis along with a returning Samuel L. Jackson? Here's a fake trailer showing the answer by Rich Williamson:   Alternate Endings of the Day: Just in time for today's home video release, here's a funny animated look at how Spider-Man: Homecoming should have ended:   Effects Breakdown of the Day: Speaking of Spider-Man: Homecoming, Imageworks shares how they animated the title superhero...

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When Rich Williamson met with his Ryerson University peer, Daniel Voshart, to view his weighty personal project, he only intended to provide a sounding board, and a person to confide in, not realizing that he would stumble on a fresh perspective on a national news story, bearing implications on a much larger scale. In the resulting Frame 394, an Oscar shortlisted documentary short, we see the fatal shooting of North Charleston local Walter Scott by police officer Michael…...

Few recent images have shocked America as much as the shaky cell phone video of Charleston police officer Michael Slager shooting unarmed Walter Scott in the back eight times. Cable news analysis of the video painted a black-and-white picture of a corrupt cop, who after radioing in that Scott had grabbed his taser — supposedly justifying the shooting — initially tried to plant his taser next to Scott’s dead body. It’s story that culminated this week when the trial led to a hung jury.

Read More: Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast: ‘Oj: Made in America’ Director Ezra Edelman on Making an Eight Hour Oscar Contender (Episode 11)

Young Canadian cinematographer Daniel Voshart, who had developed his own technique for image stabilization, instantly started playing with the shaky footage when it hit the internet. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting he produced a small clip, that was steadier and sharper compared to what had been made publicly available.

With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story fast approaching, people are starting to think of the other possible spin-offs for the Star Wars universe. There’s the young Han Solo movie and the proposed Boba Fett film, but what of that gallant and regal space monk Obi-Wan? When is he going to get his due? Thanks to this trailer, fans can envision what an Obi-Wan Kenobi solo film would look like.

Filmmaker Rich Williamson made this trailer using footage from Last Days In The Desert and Revenge Of The Sith. It shows a contemplative Kenobi in exile, struggling with the sins of the past while dutifully watching over Luke Skywalker (from a distance).

Kenobi: A Star Wars Story Teaser from Rich Williamson on Vimeo.

Yes, the Qui-Gon Jinn Force ghost is a bit wonky. But everything else about this is incredibly appealing. The idea of a quiet, thoughtful character study...

"I'll stay as long as it takes. Forever. To witness the end.”

There have been a lot of rumors surrounding Lucasfilm and Disney wanting to make a standalone Star Wars trilogy based on Obi-Wan Kenobi and his time between Star Wars Episode III and Episode IV. Those rumors included the possible return of Ewan McGregor in the role, which would be awesome! The fans would love to see these movies happen, and I hope that the executives at Lucasfilm are smart enough to eventually do it.

While we wait to see what happens, a fan by the name of Rich Williamson has edited together a great little fan trailer for a film giving us a glimpse at what Kenobi’s life might have been like after the events of Revenge of the Sith. The Jedi master is living in exile on Tatooine and is tortured by what he went through...

Here's your daily dose of an indie film in progress; at the end of the week, you'll have the chance to vote for your favorite. In the meantime: Is this a movie you’d want to see? Tell us in the comments. "Weekend Warrior" Tweetable Logline: Bobby Reddick decides to join the part-time army as a form of therapy. Elevator Pitch: Set on a non-existent Canadian military base, this film follows Bobby Reddick as he tries to adjust to life in the army, and the friction he encounters when his commanding officer discovers he's abusing the system for his own personal therapy. Production Team: Writer/Director/Actor - Lyndon Casey (Captain Coulier - Sundance) Producer - Shasha Nakhai (The Sugar Bowl, Joe) Cinematographer - Rich Williamson (The Sugar Bowl, Where Does It Go From Here) Actor - Dillon Casey (The Vow, Nikita, Vampire Diaries, Remedy, Mvp, Captain Coulier) Actor - Conor Casey (Mouthful - SXSW,...

Following two event-filled weekends, March 1-4 and 9-11, the third edition of the AmérAsia Film Festival has come to a close. This year the festival featured about 50 Asian and Asian-Canadian films including Cannes and Academy Award-winning productions from China, Kyroskistan, India, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam, as well a number of Quebec-origin films. Over 100 invited guests from as far as Japan and South Korea were in attendance at five different venues across Montreal, mixing with homegrown filmmakers and academics. Sound On Sight contributor Edgar Chaput was present for the majority of the event, providing some excellent coverage. Here is a quick break down of some of his reviews:

Pearls of the Far East

Directed by Cuong Ngo

Written by Minh Ngoc Nguyen and Matt Guerin

Vietnam, 2011

Any young director is faced with a steep challenge when shifting his or her focus from the realm of short films to that of the feature length.