News

Beta Cinema has revealed further sales on its Berlinale and Europe Film Market lineup, including “500 Miles,” “Führer and Seducer,” “Hammarskjöld,” “The Light” and “From Hilde, With Love.”

After a first deal on the upcoming Bill Nighy-roadmovie “500 Miles” with True Brit Ent. for U.K. was announced during the market, Beta Cinema has confirmed further territories have picked up the dramedy: Australia and New Zealand (Kismet), Middle East (Front Row), Italy (Maestro Distribution), Benelux (September Film), Greece (Feelgood) and former Yugoslavia (Discovery). Aardwolf Films picked up worldwide airline rights. BAFTA-winner Morgan Matthews will direct from a script by Malcolm Campbell, based on the novel “Charlie and Me” by Mark Lowery later in 2024. Roman Griffin Davis will star next to Nighy.

The market premiere for “Führer and Seducer” led to new deals with Condor Entertainment for France, Beta Film for Bulgaria and Tfg for Greece. Deals with Spain (A...

Picturehouse Entertiainment has picked up From Hilde, With Love, the new drama from German director Andreas Dresen (Stopped on Track) for the U.K. and Ireland, adding to a swath of European deals for the title, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last month.

Liv Lisa Fries (Babylon Berlin) stars in the 1940s-set drama as Hilde Coppi, a member of a left-wing anti-Nazi resistance cell. Beta, which is handling international sales for the movie, previously announced deals for From Hilde, With Love with Haut et Court in France, Teodora in Italy, Angel Film across Scandinavia, September Film for Benelux and Outsider for Portugal, among other deals. Palace Film will release From Hilde, With Love in Australia and New Zealand. Pandora Film Verleih is handling the German release and will bow the movie in German-speaking territories this October.

Beta also announced a series of deals for its upcoming Bill Nighy road movie 500 Miles,...

Beta Cinemas has sold Hammarskjold – Fight For Peace, the Swedish box office hit, across Europe as a slew of deals were unveiled at EFM in Berlin.

The biopic has gone to Rai Cinema in Italy, Swift Productions for France, Twelve Oaks Spain, Portugal’s Outsider Films and Discovery for the former Yugoslavia. Beta adds a U.S. deal is under negotiation.

Hammarskjöld – Fight For Peace, directed and co-written by Per Fly, stars Sex Education actor Mikael Persbrandt in the role of Dag Hammarskjöld, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Fly wrote and directed the feature film Backstabbing for Beginners for A24, with Theo James and Ben Kingsley in the leading roles. He also directed the popular Danish political drama Borgen and is currently is in preproduction on the Nordic crime series Reservatet for Netflix.

Hammarskjold – Fight fo Peace, set in New York City in 1961, follows Hammarskjold as the...

Danish director Per Fly's new film Hammarskjöld - Fight for Peace is getting rave reviews from around the world. At the International Film Festival Rotterdam it scored a terrific audience rating of 4.6 out of 5, with the biopic landing firmly in that festival's top 10. The film gives an interpretation of the last months of Dag Hammarskjöld's term of service as the Secretary General of the United Nations, in 1961, in which he strongly pushed for the independence of African countries. Opposed and sabotaged by several colonial superpowers, Hammarskjöld died in a very suspicious plane accident while trying to establish peace in Congo. Our Martin Kudlac gave a very positive review of the film (you can read that here). It wasn't just the film...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, died in 1961. But questions surrounding his tragic passing in a plane crash, and his sexuality, refuse to die down.

“We know who he is, but we don’t know that much about him,” says director Per Fly, now bringing “Hammarskjöld – Fight for Peace” to the International Film Festival Rotterdam. His journals “Markings,” published posthumously, provided a way in.

“There he was, this powerful man, and yet his writings deal with loneliness and sacrifice. There was a fragile poet inside of a politician.”

With Beta Cinema on board, the film was produced by Patrick Ryborn for Unlimited Stories. Variety premieres the trailer here.

According to Fly, Hammarskjöld was also a man who couldn’t afford to love.

“Dag said: ‘I am not a homosexual.’ Of course he did – otherwise, he would go to jail. One time,...

Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt is the star of “Hammarskjöld,” Per Fly’s Cold War-set political thriller, which Beta Cinema will launch at the European Film Market.

Persbrandt will play the lead role in the English-language film as Dag Hammarskjöld, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations who died in a mysterious plane crash in 1961.

Hammarskjöld, whom John F. Kennedy called “the greatest statesman of our century,” was a Nobel Prize winner who fought to end colonization.

Produced by Beta Nordic Studios’ Swedish banner Unlimited Stories, the story opens at the peak of the Cold War in 1961 at the Un headquarters in New York City. The charismatic diplomat and economist Dag Hammarskjöld has reached the pinnacle of his power, serving as Secretary General of the United Nations in his seventh year.

After decolonization, he takes it upon himself to bring peace to the African countries, thwarting plans to further exploit resources...

In the last seventy decades in the wake of the First and the Second World Wars, as nations united so as to prevent the scourge of war, and if not, to at least ameliorate its effects on the innocents, peacemaking became a full-time and hopefully, sacrosanct activity. But, as said, both the peacemakers and the peacekeepers seemed to somehow attract the worst from the people whom they sought to protect, with zealots of either side or other vested interests, gunning for them.

Mahatma Gandhi is the best example in the Indian context, over accusations that he was not mindful of the interests of his "own" people, and calling for amity at a time when a sort of "blood lust" seemed to have seized people. But, there are more examples of those who sought to solve problems in faraway lands, where they had no stake at all, and still went to pay for it.

GÖTEBORG, Sweden — Laughs were aplenty at the Stora Theatern, where Göteborg Film Festival artistic director Jonas Holmberg welcomed the recipient of the Nordic Honorary Dragon Award, fresh off his Golden Globe win for HBO’s “Chernobyl”.

“It wasn’t planned. I thought that will be my only award this year, that’s why I said yes!” – joked Skarsgård, before jumping right into discussing his impressive career. Starting with 1960s series “Bombi Bitt och jag”, a still from which was met with delighted giggles. “This little boy? He didn’t want to be an actor, he wanted to be a diplomat” – he explained. “Dag Hammarskjöld was the hero of my childhood and my idea of a diplomat was someone who travels the world to bring peace. I still haven’t decided what I want to do when I grow up.”

As hard as it is to believe, it wasn’t an...

The actor, 68, on dreaming of being a diplomat, smashing telephones with skill and the days before Marvel ruled the world

I intended to become a diplomat. That was my dream. I didn’t take acting seriously until I was 16 and got a role in a Swedish show that made me extremely famous right away. There were screaming girls, all that stuff. I’d never had any girl take an interest in me before that. Suddenly being a diplomat didn’t seem half as attractive as it had done.

My heroes growing up were politicians. The main one was Dag Hammarskjöld, a Swedish politician who was the secretary general of the United Nations. He was a real hero for peace to many of my generation. I idolised him.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Before we get to our weekly streaming picks, check out our annual feature: Where to Stream the Best Films of 2019.

Cold Case Hammarskjöld (Mads Brügger)

In 1961, Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in Africa under mysterious circumstances. Beginning as an investigation into his still-unsolved death, the trail that Mads Brügger follows in Cold Case Hammarskjöld is one that expands to implicate some of the world’s most powerful governments in unfathomably heinous crimes. Without revealing the specifics of the jaw-dropping revelations in this thoroughly engrossing documentary, if there’s any justice, what is brought to light will cause global...

Magnolia Pictures has acquired U.S. rights to “About Endlessness” following its best director win at this year’s Venice International Film Festival.

It reunites the company with Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson, who previously directed Magnolia’s 2015 release “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence.” The indie studio is planning a 2020 theatrical bow for the film.

“About Endlessness” presents a dreamy look at both the historical and the banal, taking viewers through a kaleidoscope of experiences — a couple floats over a war-torn Cologne; on the way to a birthday party, a father stops to tie his daughter’s shoelaces in the pouring rain; teenage girls dance outside a cafe; a defeated army marches to a prisoner-of-war camp.

In a positive review, Variety‘s Guy Lodge wrote, “short, bittersweet and exquisitely imagined, Roy Andersson’s latest compilation of mordant existential sketches finds him on familiar turf, and that’s fine.

In 1961, a plane crashed in Ndola, Rhodesia. One of the passengers who perished in the accident was Dag Hammarskjöld, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. He’d been negotiating a cease-fire between troops in the Republic of Katanga and U.N. forces. Hammarskjöld was 56 years old. These are facts.

Mads Brügger knows the facts of this case, of course. But he’s also interested in sifting through the official record to find what you might call the truth behind the truth. A Danish filmmaker with a love of immersive, gonzo-investigative...

August warmth is a harbinger for the fall theatrical season, which is already revving into gear. Magnolia Pictures’ Cold Case Hammarskjöld continues recent non-fiction theatrical debuts that are eyeing awards season. Cold Case won the Best Director prize in the World Documentary section at Sundance in January. Sony Pictures Classics is opening doc Aquarela in select locations. The Participant-produced title debuted at last year’s Venice Film Festival. India’s Fip will have the widest Specialty start on this continent this weekend for drama Mission Mangal headlined by Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar. Sundance comedy Adam begins its run in two New York and L.A. theaters, while Slamdance honoree Birds Without Feathers by Wendy McColm launches exclusively in Manhattan.

Other limited releases include Roberto Minervini’s What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? via KimStim. Halfway Crooks Entertainment has Low Low in L.A. starting Friday, while...

History buffs might know a thing or two about the 1961 plane crash of United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. He was, at the time, outspoken in his support for the sovereignty of the Congo, despite pressure from foreign mining companies to pillage the African nation’s rich mineral resources.

Was the plane crash an unhappy accident, or a deliberate assassination planned as part of a vast conspiracy with tentacles reaching all over the world? That’s what filmmaker Mads Brügger sets out to unpack in “Cold Case Hammarskjöld,” opening in select theaters this weekend from Magnolia Pictures. The documentary carefully unpeels the mysterious details surrounding Hammarskjöld’s unexpected death and the ensuing fallout. Overflowing with enough personality to warrant his own documentary film, Brügger inserts himself into the proceedings in Herzogian fashion as a showboating investigative journalist, abetted by a Danish private investigator who, alongside the director, falls down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory.

"This could either be the world's biggest murder mystery, or the world's most idiotic conspiracy theory." Two years before the JFK assassination, on the 18th of September 1961, the world was shocked by the suspicious death of the second serving Secretary-General of the United Nations. In a plane crash in Ndola, Rhodesia, Dag Hammarskjöld was the only person on board not horribly scorched in the 'accident.' Instead he was bloodied, and a playing card was tucked in his shirt collar. Nearly six decades later, the Un is still (nominally) investigating the details of what was thought first thought to be an accident, then a targeted assassination, of a man who had designs on the political and financial independence of the African continent. In fact, U.S....

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld’ a Documentary Directed by Mads Brügger

Opens in New York and Los Angeles on August 16

**Winner — Directing Award, World Cinema Documentary Competition — Sundance Ff 2019

“This could either be the world’s biggest murder mystery, or the world’s most idiotic conspiracy theory.” And with that sentence, the documentary ‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld’ begins.

In 1961, United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, a kind of boring bureaucrat since taking office in 1952 (at the height of the Cold War), was killed in an airplane crash while en route to cease-fire negotiations during the Congo Crisis, at a time when he was becoming a figure of hope and transformation for the nations of Africa emerging from under the colonial thumbs.

The superpowers had expected the Secretary-General would focus on administrative issues and refrain from participating in political discussion. Hammarskjöld’s reputation at the time was, in the words of biographer Emery Kelèn, “that of a brilliant economist,...

Cold Case Hammarskjöld centers on the mysterious death of United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld. Most of the crew, along with Hammarskjöld perished in the 1961 plane crash, and since then speculation arose that the tragedy was actually an assassination.

Hammarskjöld was an activist who sought for Congo’s independence, something that was not popular European mining companies. [...]

The post Assassination Conspiracy Explored In Immersive ‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld’ Trailer appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

Armed with a plinth hat, a metal detector, two Cuban cigars and an investigating partner who doesn't smoke, Mads Brügger returns to Africa with his most ambitious documentary project yet. You may recall this previous efforts at starting own blood-diamond mine and smuggling operation, just to show how easy and cheap it can be done, in The Ambassador.   Here, Brügger tackles the largest conspiracy assassination theory in Europe, that of the second Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld. This occured a few years prior to the John F. Kennedy murder, which perhaps hijacked much of the global press coverage, and is probably the reason why...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

One of the most gripping, terrifying films of the year starts fairly inconspicuously, before it unfolds into something far more substantial and affecting. In 1961, Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in Africa under mysterious circumstances. Beginning as an investigation into his still-unsolved death, the trail that Mads Brügger follows in Cold Case Hammarskjöld is one that expands to implicate some of the world’s most powerful governments in unfathomably heinous crimes. Following a premiere at Sundance, a new trailer has now arrived ahead of an August release, featuring a quote from our review.

I said in my review, “Sitting down for the documentary, I had virtually no knowledge or interest in a Swedish Secretary-General who died over half-a-century ago. By the first half, I was fully invested in the case. At the finale, I was reeling from the atrocities that were uncovered and...

“This could either be the world’s biggest murder mystery, or the world’s most idiotic conspiracy theory.” And with that sentence, the first trailer for the upcoming documentary “Cold Case Hammarskjöld” begins.

As seen in the footage, “Cold Case Hammarskjöld” is one of the more unusual, and thus, interesting, films you’ll likely see all year. Told by Danish journalist and filmmaker Mads Brügger, the film follows the story of United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld and his untimely death following a mysterious plane crash in 1961.

Continue reading ‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld’ Trailer: Mads Brügger’s Sundance Doc Pushes The Boundaries Of Non-Fiction Storytelling at The Playlist.

The year was 1961, and United Nations General Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld was under fire for his support of Congo. Rather than appeasing the Un, he was outspoken in his opposition to colonialism. While powerful foreign mining companies had their hearts set on maintaining access to Congo’s mineral resources, Hammarskjöld was unwavering in his commitment to the African nations’ independence.

Then his plane crashed.

The circumstances behind the General Secretary’s sudden death have always been mysterious. It has long been suggested that the crash was a deliberate attempt on his life from one of his deep-pocketed enemies. But as time passed, the unsolved story vanished from the public consciousness.

Filmmaker Mads Brügger is hoping to change that with his new documentary “Cold Case Hammarskjöld.” The film is a methodical investigation of the events surrounding his death, with Brügger making himself the main character of the film. Much like his past films,...

The BBC has picked up a slew of feature docs including Oscar-nominated Minding The Gap and Sundance titles One Child Nation and Maiden.

This comes as the British public broadcaster has revamped its feature doc strand Storyville with films launching on youth-skewing network BBC Three for the first time as it looks to appeal to younger audiences.

The pick ups were unveiled today at the Sheffield Doc/Fest by BBC Storyville Commissioning Editor Mandy Chang.

Minding the Gap will air on BBC Three alongside true crime doc Roll Red Roll and music doc Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl.

Bing Liu’s Oscar nominated Minding the Gap is the coming-of-age saga of three skateboarding friends in their Rust Belt hometown, hit hard by decades of recession. In his quest to understand why he and his friends ran away from home as teenagers, Bing tracks 23-year-old Zack as he becomes a...

Chicago – Tonight what heights we’ll hit. The 7th Chicago Critics Film Festival (Ccff) begins on Friday, May 17th, 2019, and offers a week of 2019 film greatness, selected by Chicago Film Critics from the major festivals so far. This will be a whole week at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre, Click here for the schedule.

7th Chicago Critics Film Festival

Photo credit: Ian Simmons for ChicagoCriticsFilmFestival.com

Patrick McDonald (Pm) and Jon Lennon Espino (Jle) of HollywoodChicago.com has previewed some films, and anticipate others. We’ve divided this overview into Films We’Ve Seen, Films We Want To See (Based On Title Or Description) and Films We Must See. We hope to See You there.

Films We’Ve Seen

Saint Frances

The Opening Night film is a statement of sorts … a statement regarding the pressures on women to manifest certain obligations within their lives in our current world. It is...

This time a year ago, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary “Rbg” was proving to be a boon for arthouse and indie movie theaters nationwide, becoming the first of several hit summer documentaries. But in 2019, are there any docs that can keep the genre’s hot streak rolling?

Already this year, we’ve seen one documentary find some mainstream success. Neon/CNN Films’ “Apollo 11” rode a mix of strong marketing, critical acclaim and IMAX support to an $8.6 million box-office total during its approximately 600-screen theatrical run.

That comes off of a 2018 in which five documentaries grossed more than $10 million, the most titles the genre has seen pass that milestone in a single calendar year. Among them were “Rbg,” ($14 million) the Mister Rogers doc “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” ($22.8 million) and the Oscar-winning “Free Solo” ($17.5 million).

Also Read: John Lewis Documentary From CNN Films in the Works

This summer, it...

"This could either be the world's biggest murder mystery, or the world's most idiotic conspiracy theory." Two years before the JFK assassination, on the 18th of September 1961, the world was shocked by the suspicious death of the second serving Secretary-General of the United Nations. In a plane crash in Ndola, Rhodesia, Dag Hammarskjöld was the only person on board not horribly scorched in the 'accident.' Instead he was bloodied, and a playing card was tucked in his shirt collar. Nearly six decades later, the Un is still (nominally) investigating the details of what was thought first thought to be an accident, then a targeted assassination, of a man who had designs on the political and financial independence of the African continent. In fact Kennedy...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

In 1961, Un Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash on his way to broker a peace deal in the Congo. The official stated cause of the crash was pilot error. However, considering Hammarskjöld was an outspoken proponent of African countries retaining autonomy over their resources, and that the rebel leader he was meeting […]

The post ‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld’ Review: A Political Mystery Uncovers a Horrifying Conspiracy in This True Crime Doc appeared first on /Film.

In 1961, Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in Africa under mysterious circumstances. Beginning as an investigation into his still-unsolved death, the trail that Mads Brügger follows in Cold Case Hammarskjöld is one that expands to implicate some of the world’s most powerful governments in unfathomably heinous crimes. Following a premiere at Sundance, the first trailer has now arrived along with the news that Magnolia Pictures has picked up the film for a U.S. release.

I said in my review, “Sitting down for the documentary, I had virtually no knowledge or interest in a Swedish Secretary-General who died over half-a-century ago. By the first half, I was fully invested in the case. At the finale, I was reeling from the atrocities that were uncovered and enraged that it has taken this long to bring them to the surface. If it wasn’t...

Deals include Alejandro Landes’ Sundance and Berlinale hit Monos; Peter Strickland’s In Fabric and Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale.

Scandinavian distributor NonStop Entertainment has closed a record 14 deals during Sundance and Berlin’s European Film Market.

The titles (full details below) are: Monos, The Nightingale, Colour Out Of Space, In Fabric, The Hole In The Ground, The Brink, Shooting The Mafia, Cold Case Hammarskjöld, Hail Satan, We Intend To Cause Havoc, Galveston, Out Of Blue, Charlie Says and Mid90s

“It’s noteworthy that 7 out the 14 films are directed by women and that they come from some of the...

In today’s film news roundup, Miramax has set up the comedy “Silent Retreat,” sci-fi romance “Clara” and “Cold Case Hammarskjold” get distribution and Olivia Wilde is honored for directing “Booksmart.”

Project Unveiled

Miramax has set up the comedy “Silent Retreat” with “Isn’t It Romantic” director Todd Strauss-Schulson attached to helm from a script he co-wrote with Matt Fogel (“The Lego Movie 2”).

Pre-production has started on “Silent Retreat” with plans to shoot in late spring and the early summer supervised by Matthew Anderson at Miramax.

The project centers on a man and woman with relationship issues who decide to go on a meditation retreat that requires absolute silence for three days along with the man’s best friend and recently widowed mother. Disaster ensues in what the filmmakers describe as, “If Gus Van Sant and Buster Keaton made a silent comedy about wisdom, compassion, and the difficulties of digesting a tempeh-based diet.

Magnolia Pictures has acquired the North American rights to the documentary “Cold Case Hammarskjöld,” which won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at Sundance this month. Magnolia is planning to release the film this year.

The film follows the unfinished investigation into the death of Un Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who was killed in a plane crash in 1961. It’s understood that because at the time, Hammarskjöld was advocating for Congo’s independence, the “crash” was an assassination.

With the case still unsolved fifty-plus years later, Danish journalist and filmmaker Mads Brügger takes up the case and begins to uncover a critical secret that could send shockwaves around the world.

Also Read: Magnolia Pictures Lands 'Mike Wallace Is Here' Documentary

“Mads Brügger has gotten ahold of a whopper of a tale,” said Magnolia president Eamonn Bowles. “‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld’ is destined to be one of the most hotly-discussed films of the year.

Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to Cold Case Hammarskjöld, the documentary from journalist Mads Brügger that delves into the investigation surrounding the death of Un secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld. The pic just won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival where it had its world premiere. A 2019 release date is in the works. The pic centers on the 1961 plane crash that killed Hammarskjöld, a case that remains unsolved.

Dr Sales handles international sales on Sundance winner.

Magnolia Pictures has acquired its third Sundance documentary in a week, taking North American rights to Cold Case Hammarskjöld following the premiere in Park City last month.

Director and journalist Mads Brügger’s investigation into the enigmatic death of United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld won the World Cinema Documentary directing award and will get a theatrical release this year.

Brügger’s film probes the disappearance in 1961 of Hammarskjöld, whose plane crashed mysteriously, leaving no survivors. Hammarskjöld had been advocating for Congolese independence at the time, and the incident triggered rumours that he was assassinated.

Danish documaker Simon Lereng Wilmont’s Oscar-shortlisted “The Distant Barking of Dogs,” which observes the impact of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine on the life of a 10-year-old Ukrainian boy, encapsulates why, just as with fictional features, Danish docs are thriving.

This fly-on-the-wall portrait that unfolds from the boy’s perspective without a word of narration “deftly weaves a precise coming-of-age narrative into its morally urgent anti-war tableau,” wrote Variety critic Guy Lodge. Besides stemming from a special sensitivity for the children’s universe that Danish cinema is known for, the pluriprized doc is also emblematic of how local documakers are honing their craft, pushing boundaries, and taking their works to new heights.

“In Denmark they are really experimenting with various forms of documentary storytelling in terms of making the narratives dramaturgically like feature films,” says Petri Kemppinen, head of the Oslo-based Nordisk Film & TV Fund.

The thriller-like...

This year’s Sundance Film Festival had no shortage of dealmaking, as Amazon spent over $41 million on some of the biggest crowdpleasers of the festival, while Netflix, A24, and Neon picked up a few notable titles as well. Nevertheless, Sundance’s 112 titles were filled with plenty of substantial offerings that have yet to score U.S. distribution. Here’s our usual plea to buyers to take a chance on these festival highlights, which deserve audiences well beyond Park City.

“Big Time Adolescence”

Much about Pete Davidson’s unique appeal, as “SNL” comedian and celebrity, has to do with his smirk: a slender half-moon with naughty connotations and an undercurrent of sadness. “Big Time Adolescence” provides the first indication of how that smile can tell a story. As the 22-year-old Zeke, the listless college dropout who becomes the rambunctious older-brother figure to 16-year-old Mo (Griffin Gluck), Davidson projects an outward confidence...

Out of all the major festivals, the juries who pick the prizes at Sundance seem to be most, well, independent in their choices. So while “Clemency” and “One Child Nation” took the top awards at the end of 10 days of discoveries, audiences and critics embraced a different group of films entirely.

Billed as one of the year’s most diverse editions ever — with women making up 44% of the directors, and a range of backgrounds on both sides of the camera in every category, not just the world competitions — the 2019 lineup may have been light on stone cold masterpieces, but the overall quality was so high, audiences can expect to see many of these directors and actors directing studio projects, if not Marvel movies, in the near future.

Here, Variety‘s chief critics Peter Debruge and Owen Gleiberman select 13 standouts from this year’s festival.

“After the Wedding”

It’s not...

There are always a few documentaries every year that deserve to be categorized under the "holy shit" section of cinema. This is one of them. Cold Case Hammarskjöld is the latest compelling documentary feature made by Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger, follow his other provocative films Kim Jong-Il's Comedy Club and The Ambassador. This time he stumbles upon something incredible, something profound and horrible, something scary and unbelievable. Yet it is believable - as seen in this film. It's easy to brush off everything as a conspiracy theory, but I'd rather believe that it's more convenient to ignore the truth than to accept that this kind of trickery and manipulation is really, truly real. But that's the discussion you will be having after seeing the film - a two hour investigation into what happened to Un Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. Brügger's film starts out as a fascinating investigation into the (unsolved) death of Dag Hammarskjöld,...

The vast majority of conspiracy theories have one key thing in common: Investigate them, and they turn out not to be true. But that doesn’t mean all of them aren’t true. “Cold Case Hammerskjöld” is a slow-building documentary mystery that sucks you in like a vortex. It offers several intertwined conspiracy theories, at least one of which, by the sternest reckoning, appears to be grounded in reality. Does that mean everything in the film is true? Maybe not. Yet “Cold Case Hammarskjöld” is a singular experience that counts as one of the most honestly disturbing and provocative nonfiction films in years.

Directed by the Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger, it starts out as an offbeat journalistic inquiry into the 1961 plane-crash death of Dag Hammarskjöld, the secretary-general of the United Nations. Reviving old claims that have dogged the case but have never been proved, the film suggests that the crash was,...

For better or worse, the last few years have seen a sizable influx of twist-dependent documentaries: Non-fiction odysseys that start as one thing and then — due to an ominous circumstance of some kind — suddenly veer in an unexpected new direction, these films tend to dig their own rabbit holes and then gain narrative traction from the gravity of plummeting down them. Looking at the success of recent examples like “Catfish,” “Tickled,” and even last year’s “Three Identical Strangers” (which might be a bit less coy about its big reveal), it seems that “Wtf!” has become an increasingly desirable reaction in a culture that fears and fetishizes spoilers in equal measure.

“Cold Case Hammarskjöld” is far and away the best and most shocking of these films. It’s the only one in which the big “twist” has genuine real-world implications that stretch beyond the story at hand, and the only...

There’s a good reason that much of Hollywood braves the thin mountain air each year to make the trek to the Sundance Film Festival, and it’s not to check out the nearby ski slopes. The annual launch of the indie film gathering brings with it the possibility of discovering the next big thing in moviemaking. Sundance has played a critical role in the careers of such A-list talent as Ava DuVernay, Ryan Coogler, David O. Russell, and Quentin Tarantino, and has hosted the premieres of such classics as “Reservoir Dogs,” “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” and “Manchester by the Sea.”

The prospect of finding the rare indie movie that can break out of the arthouse has inspired a lot of all-night bidding wars over the years. Sometimes those frenzied negotiations and massive deals pay off, as was the case with “Brooklyn” or “Fruitvale Station.” In other instances, studios end...