The most awarded Aussie in Oscar history is set to receive the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts’ (AACTA) most prestigious award. Deadline reports that costume, production, and set designer and producer Catherine Martin will be be presented with the Longford Lyell Award, which is the “highest honour that the Australian Academy can bestow upon an individual and recognizes a person who has made a truly outstanding contribution to the enrichment of Australia’s screen environment and culture while raising global awareness about Australia’s thriving film industry.”

Martin has taken home four Oscars, two apiece for “Moulin Rouge!” and “The Great Gatsby.” She also received noms for “Romeo + Juliet”

“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” we’re told. But how does this adage apply to the final quarter of our lives, when we are no longer working? Do we surrender what we love as easily as we clock out of a workday at 5 PM? Can a person truly retire from their job, when that job is also their lifeblood? This is the dilemma that the titular character faces in Martika Ramirez Escobar’s “Leonor Will Never Die.” 

Written and directed by Escobar, the surrealist and avant-garde comedy follows Leonor Reyes (Sheila Francisco), a once-eminent figure in the Filipino action film industry who is,

Nominations for the 2023 Film Independent Spirit Awards are in, and “Women Talking” is the sole woman-helmed title competing for Best Feature. Written and directed by Sarah Polley, the Rooney Mara-starrer is inspired by a true story and follows a group of women in a remote religious community reckoning with the aftermath of sexual assault. The drama is set to receive the Robert Altman Award, which is given to one film’s director, casting director, and ensemble cast.

Polley is up for Best Director and Best Screenplay. She’s joined by Halina Reijn (“Bodies Bodies Bodies”) in the former category and Lena Dunham (“Catherine Called Birdy”) in the latter.

Three of five

When the COVID-19 shutdown stripped people away from friends and family, filmmakers Erica Rose and Elina Street began to contemplate the crucial role that community plays in our lives. Although their idea for The Lesbian Bar Project (LBP) was born even before the virus hit the United States, it came to fruition during the pandemic. In October 2020, Rose and Street launched a PSA about the disappearance of lesbian bars across the country. LBP then ran a four-week fundraising campaign, raising $177,000 to support the lesbian bars still standing.

The LBP was created to draw attention to the lack of public lesbian+ spaces and celebrate existing ones. As LBP’s website explains,

The theatrical release of Nikyatu Jusu’s feature directorial debut, “Nanny,” is just days away, and new details are emerging about her follow-up to the Sundance winner. The upcoming Monkeypaw and Universal title will see her expanding her 2019 Sundance short “Suicide by Sunlight,” per Deadline. The feature follows “day-walking Black vampires who are protected from the sun by their melanin,” Jusu explained.

No word on how closely the new project, which Jusu is penning with Fredrica Bailey (“See You Yesterday”), will resemble the original short. Set in the near future in NYC, the short centers on a woman who “finds it difficult to suppress her bloodlust when a new woman

A global pandemic, a sinking economy, attempts to overturn the U.S. presidential election, racially-motivated police brutality culminating in the Black Lives Matter movement: 2020 was indeed a “year of multiple colliding crises,” as historian Erika Lee describes in the trailer for June Beallor’s “2020 Chaos and Hope.” 

A retrospective on one of the most turbulent years of our lifetimes, the doc revisits 2020 through the diverse perspectives of frontline workers, activists, scientists, and politicians, among others. “2020 Chaos and Hope” includes interviews with experts including emergency medicine doctor Kamini Doobay, author and historian Heather Cox Richardson, researcher Joan Donovan, and President Biden’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.

“So

“We have heard the story told by the hunter and not by the lion, and not by the lions who not only fought back but got away,” “Pose’s” Angelica Ross says in a new trailer for “Framing Agnes.”  The award-winning doc reimagines trans history in America through the story of one Agnes (Zachary Drucker, “Transparent”).

“Agnes” was the pseudonym of a young trans woman who “lied her way into the UCLA Gender Clinic to get access to surgery” and gender-affirming healthcare in the 1960s, the trailer tells us. “Framing Agnes” blends fiction and non-fiction and uses the “fascinating and celebrated figure in trans history” as a springboard to revisit other

Awards season is heating up and Women in Film (WIF) is working to ensure that voters remember that the industry doesn’t just consist of men. WIF has released its fourth annual #VoteForWomen fill ballot “recognizing the abundance of women whose work behind the camera made the film landscape of 2022 possible,” per a press release.”Every year we see hundreds of women excelling at their roles as creative and craft leads on films big and small, and we are too often dismayed by how few of them make it into the predominant discussions of who gets celebrated with nominations and awards — recognition which can lead to continued work and

“Women Talking” doesn’t hit theaters until December but writer-director Sarah Polley is already attracting plenty of awards attention for the star-studded drama. She’s been named Director of the Year by the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF), and will receive the honor at PSIFF’s annual awards gala January 5.

“The past two recipients of the Palm Springs director award — Jane Campion last year for ‘The Power of the Dog’ and Chloé Zhao for ‘Nomadland’ — each went on to win the Best Director Oscar,” Deadline notes.

Based on Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel of the same name, “Women Talking” is set in a remote Mennonite colony and tells the story of