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No Sleep Till.According to its website, Omnes Films wants to “fill a void” in modern cinema. A collective of filmmakers based for the most part in and around Los Angeles, its productions “favor atmosphere over plot” in an attempt to shed light on “the many forms of cultural decay in the twenty-first century.” Two of those, Carson Lund’s Eephus and Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, among the finest titles to premiere at Cannes earlier this year, understand that as an erosion of certain ways of being among others. Crucially, both also tether that decline to the loss of physical, brick-and-mortar places. In Eephus, a gang of middle-aged amateur baseball players meet at the local field for one final match before the site will be cleared for a new middle school; in Christmas Eve, an Italian-American family gathers at Grandma’s Long Island house for...

It was the day after Halloween, and at The Grove in Los Angeles, Christmas decorations had already been rolled out and strung up. It was fitting for the interview I was about to have with filmmaker and musician Tyler Taormina, who was in between travels for his most recent work, “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” but rather than sit outside and enjoy the ambience, I asked if he’d like to head to Barnes & Noble for the first day of their annual November Criterion Collection sale. Seeing his eyes light up with excitement, I realized I had my answer.

Taormina and I were a few years apart at Emerson College in Boston, and though we’d never met, I found an unmistakable familiarity with him as we started to chat and look through Blu-rays and DVDs. Perhaps it resulted from being shaped at the same institution, or maybe...

Venice Prize Winner ‘Familiar Touch’, ‘ ‘Black Dog & ‘Eephus’ Set For Red Sea Fest

In the first film program announcement for its upcoming edition, Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea International Film Festival has unveiled the 12 titles in its Festival Favourites line-up. The sidebar celebrates films that have enjoyed a high-profile outing on the festival circuit in recent months such as Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch, which won the Luigi de Laurentiis prize for best first film at Venice, and Cannes Un Certain Regard winner Black Dog by Guan Hu. The other titles comprise Agora (Tunisia), East Of Noon (Egypt), Eephus (U.S.), Freedom Way (Nigeria), The Inevitable Journey To Find A Wedding Dress (Egypt), The Legend Of The Vagabond Queen Of Lagos, Little Jaffna (France), Quiet Life (Greece), Santosh (UK) and U Are The Universe (Ukraine). “This year’s selection continues to demonstrate our commitment to showcasing diverse...

The Valladolid International Film Festival celebrates its 69th edition from Nov. 18, and according to fest director José Luis Cienfuegos, it’s one of the most modern and international editions the festival, known locally as Seminci, has ever hosted.

Nestled snuggly into an autumn lull after the breakneck run from Venice through Toronto and into San Sebastian, Seminci has long stood out as a bastion for independent cinema in Spain, while San Sebastian has often catered to more big-name, big-budget fare, especially in recent years.

Set in the capital city of the Spanish region Castilla-Leon, Valladolid’s 69th edition is the second under director Cienfuegos, who boasts an illustrious nearly 30-year career as a festival director at the Seville European Film Festival (2012-2023) and Gijon Intl. Film Festival (1995-2011).

“Valladolid is a city absolutely dedicated to the festival that demands and needs to open the doors to a new generation of filmmakers,...

Music Box Films has bought U.S. rights to “Ghost Trail,” Jonathan Millet’s tense revenge thriller, from MK2 films (“Anatomy of a Fall”).

Millet’s feature debut premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it opened the Critic’s Week section. It has since screened at the BFI London and Vancouver film festivals.

“Ghost Trail” will hold its U.S. premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival on Friday night. Music Box Films will release “Ghost Trail” next spring.

Based on true events, “Ghost Trail” stars up-and-coming French actor Adam Bessa as Hamid, a Syrian refugee who has relocated to France as part of a secret group pursuing the Syrian regime’s fugitive leaders. “His mission takes him on the trail of his former torturer — spending his days locating the prison guard from his past. With his judgment clouded by pressure, doubt and revenge, will Hamid be ready to confront him?...

The Chicago International Film Festival never slouches. As a local and the humble film editor of The A.V. Club, it’s one of the premiere cultural events of the year. But its 2024 edition—its 60th, screening over 120 features—highlights something that always makes the fest special. Featuring a plethora of...

It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball in October. Even as America’s signature “national pastime” has taken a backseat to football and basketball in recent years, the end of the marathon regular season and the start of the playoffs still induce a twinge of nostalgic passion in even the most cynical sports fan. With the MLB Wild Card series beginning this week, it’s fitting that Music Box Films has announced a release date for “Eephus,” Carson Lund’s baseball drama that charmed Cannes when it debuted in the 2024 Directors’ Fortnight.

IndieWire can exclusively reveal that “Eephus” will open at Film at Lincoln Center and the IFC Center on March 7, 2025, with a national rollout to follow. That means that New York cinephiles will have a chance to watch the film during Spring Training, and audiences across the country will be able to catch the expansion just as the regular season is beginning.

When it came to American indie offering on the Croisette this year it is Anora and a pair of films in the Quinzaine section in Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point and Eephus that grabbed most of the attention — but there was a micro film showcased in the Critics’ Week section that really stood out – and now that film will receive theatrical release support via the Dekanalog folks. Deadline reports that Constance Tsang’s Blue Sun Palace has been picked up. No mention as to when the film will drop, but we imagine it’ll be more film festival play before a likely early 2025 release.…...

Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.As the vaporetto pulled out of San Marco and veered east toward the Lido, I decided I’d kick off my tenth trip to the Venice Film Festival doing something I’d never done before: visit its Extended Reality section. Tucked away on a little island that once served as a leper colony, Venice Immersive is home to dozens of VR projects slotted in competitive and non-competitive programs every year. I had no idea what to expect from this edition, though a cursory glance at the menu suggested a motif. Aside from titles that vowed to explore new formats and ideas around spectatorship, there were several that felt true to our era of anxious, restless doomscrolling. Catastrophes, tragedies, and crises were at the cornerstone of the handful of works I saw, including Asio Chihsiung Liu and Feng Ting Tsou’s Somewhere Unknown in Indochina, a study...

"It's been a good time." "Yes it has." The fall film festival season continues with the next big one - the New York Film Festival taking place at the Lincoln Center in NYC's Upper West Side. The NYFF continues to be one of the most exciting & elegant festivals, showcasing truly the best of the best of the year in cinema. NYFF is celebrating its 62nd year and has debuted this trailer to promote some of their favorites - tons of sneak footage. "Since 1963, NYFF has shaped film culture & continues an enduring tradition of introducing audiences to bold and remarkable works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent." The 62nd NYFF kicks off on September 27th, with tickets already on sale right now. The festival runs a full two weeks, ending on the 14th of October, with tons of screenings of all of their selection. The 2024 line-up's highlights including Steve McQueen's Blitz,...

Jon Bell’s psychological horror The Moogai has scooped the CinefestOZ Film Prize Award of $66,500 – Australia’s most lucrative prize for a local production.

The award was given on Saturday (September 7) at the 17th CinefestOZ Film Festival in Busselton, Western Australia and accepted by co-producer Alex White and actor Meyne Wyatt.

The Moogai marks the feature debut of Indigenous writer/director Bell and follows a young woman, played by Shari Sebbens, who believes an evil spirit is intent on taking her children. It explores the subjects of post-natal depression, transgenerational trauma and indigenous children taken from their parents – known as the stolen generation.

US filmmaker Carson Lund’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title Eephus has landed sales across Asia, ahead of its screenings at the New York Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival, for Film Constellation.

The baseball comedy drama has sold to Japan (Transformer), Indonesia (Falcon) and India (BigTree), as well as to Encore for inflight/ships.

It has previously sold to Capricci for France and the Music Box Films for the US.

The New England-set comedy drama unfolds as a construction project looms over a small-town baseball field, leaving a pair of Sunday league teams to face off for the last...

Poland’s American Film Festival is continuing to bet on U.S. independent films, ignoring the Hollywood blockbusters and bigger budget auteur films from the mini-majors.

“The fest selects a very precise type of project – they are real independent films, not in that Independent Spirit Award, less-than-$40 million sense,” says director and producer Rob Rice.

“The people that come with them have a kind of shorthand with each other. We are all up against the same things and we are all trying to trick the industry into mistaking our films for ‘real movies.’”

“There are always lots of interesting things happening in American independent cinema. It’s enough to mention three alumni of [fest’s industry sidebar] U.S. in Progress: Anu Valia (“We Strangers”), India Donaldson (“Good One”) and Sarah Friedland. These are great examples of new female voices speaking about female experiences, and keeping things intimate and personal,” says artistic director Ula Śniegowska.

Alexandra Simpson makes her feature directing and writing debut with Venice Critics Week entry “No Sleep Till,” a dreamy, visually striking look at locals in a small Florida beach town under the threat of a hurricane. Shot by Sylvain Froidevaux, the humidity drips off the screen as teenagers party and skateboard, and a girl mans the register at a souvenir shop that barely attract any customers. There’s an aspiring comic and his buddy, who can’t quite make the leap to the bigger-time clubs up north, a Zen-like storm chaser and public pool caretakers. All the characters also live under the threat of gentrification, which could price them out of their town.

Simpson herself was born in Paris and grew up there but spent summers in the Atlantic coastal town of Neptune Beach, Fla., where the bulk of the film was shot, capturing a portrait of life that is slowly disappearing in the state.

Music Box Films has acquired US rights from Film Constellation to Eephus, Carson Lund’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight entry and upcoming New York Film Festival selection.

‘Eephus’: Cannes Review

The distributor plans a nationwide theatrical release followed by home entertainment roll-out.

Eephus takes place in a small-town New England baseball field earmarked for removal as two Sunday league teams face off for the last time. The film takes its name from the Eephus pitch, a rare, high-arcing slow pitch used to deceive hitters.

Keith William Richards, Wayne Diamond and Keith Poulson star and documentarian Frederick Wiseman performs a voice cameo.

Music Box Films has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Carson Lund’s comedy drama “Eephus,” which premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. The film was recently announced as an Official Selection of New York Film Festival, where it will have its North American premiere.

Music Box plans for a theatrical release nationwide followed by home entertainment. London- and Paris-based sales and production house Film Constellation handles worldwide sales and negotiated the deal on behalf of the filmmakers.

“Eephus” is set on a small-town New England baseball field called Soldiers Field. As an imminent construction project looms over their beloved baseball field, a pair of Sunday league teams face off for the last time over the course of a day. Tensions flare up and ceremonial laughs are shared as an era of camaraderie and escapism fades into an uncertain future.

Variety highlighted “Eephus” as one of the must-see films of the...

Thirty-three films will make up the Main Slate of the 62nd New York Film Festival, including the latest from David Cronenberg, Sean Baker, Payal Kapadia, Mike Leigh, Mati Diop, Hong Sang-soo and Julia Loktev. The festival will take place Sept. 27 — Oct. 14, 2024.

“The festival’s ambition is to reflect the state of cinema in a given year, which often means also reflecting the state of the world,” the festival’s artistic director Dennis Lim said in a statement. “The most notable thing about the films in the Main Slate — and in the other sections that we will announce in the coming weeks— is the degree to which they emphasize cinema’s relationship to reality. They are reminders that, in the hands of its most vital practitioners, film has the capacity to reckon with, intervene in, and reimagine the world.”

The movies in this year’s Main Slate come from 24 different countries.

The title of Carson Lund’s feature-length directorial debut, Eephus, refers to one of the rarest of baseball pitches, an unnaturally slow curveball with plenty of topspin that’s incredibly difficult to hit. At one point in the film, which depicts the final game between two recreation-league teams on a small-town Massachusetts intramural field due to be paved over, a player explains the philosophy behind the pitch to a teammate. As he does so, we’re subtly tasked with thinking of the film’s characters, so superficially awkward in their skill set, as extensions of the pitch: weapons of deception and surprise, not least of which for how they increasingly reveal their passion for the sport and each other as the game unfurls.

Both teams comprise rosters of middle-aged, mostly out-of-shape men for whom this rec league is more of an excuse to get out of the house than anything.

America’s favorite pastime is getting another life onscreen.

In the wake of “Field of Dreams,” “Bad News Bears,” and “The Sandlot,” a new crop of baseball features have swung onto the field of latest releases. Adam Sandler’s long-awaited reunion with director Josh Safdie includes baseball memorabilia; Austin Butler is teaming up with Darren Aronofsky to play a former high school baseball prospect turned alcoholic bartender who gets caught up in a crime-fueled treasure hunt in “Caught Stealing”; and cinematographer Carson Lund made his directorial debut with adult rec team coming-of-age drama “Eephus,” which debuted at Cannes 2024.

Now, baseball is going the way of heartfelt family drama for “You Gotta Believe.”

The upcoming film is based on the true story of a Fort Worth youth baseball team that defied the odds to make it all the way to the 2002 Little League World Series. Ty Roberts directs the feature that...

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds Of Kindness, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, are among the films that will screen in CineMasters, the main competition of this month’s Munich International Film Festival (Miff), taking place from June 28 to July in Germany.

Fourteen films are in the running for CineMasters’ €50,000 Arri Award which is presented to the producers of the best international film. Further titles include Jia Zhang-ke’s Caught By The Tides, Rúnar Rúnarsson’s When The Light Breaks, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section last month, as well as Jaione Camborda...

Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.Find all of our Cannes 2024 coverage here.Eephus.Founded in 2011 by a group of college friends in Boston, Omnes Films is a production company that’s quietly created some of the most unique American movies of the last half-decade. Now based in Los Angeles, Omnes came to prominence in 2019 with Ham on Rye, a magical-realist coming-of-age fable set in suburban Long Island that solidified the collective’s four main players: director Tyler Taormina, cinematographer Carson Lund, producer Michael Basta, and music supervisor Jonathan Davies—all of whom have subsequently directed their own films under the Omnes banner.Omnes’s two latest projects, Eephus and Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (both 2024), directed by Lund and Taormina, respectively, both premiered in Cannes as part of this year’s Directors’ Fortnight—a programming decision further confirming the section’s renewed interest in American cinema following the inclusion of The Sweet East,...

Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.For more Cannes 2024 coverage, subscribe to the Weekly Edit newsletter.Eephus.For all the thrills that come from watching the latest film by this or that renowned auteur, I don’t come to Cannes for confirmation, but for the pleasure of discovery. And nothing quite matches the exhilaration of reckoning with a new voice—the kind that jolts you out of your festival torpor and reminds you of all the beauty and magic the cinema can muster. As usual, those epiphanies were a lot harder to come by in the official competition than in the risk-friendlier Directors’ Fortnight, an independent sidebar born in 1969 as a counterprogram dedicated, per its mission statement, “to showcasing the most singular forms of contemporary cinema.” It is here that some of the greatest have shown their earliest stuff, an illustrious pedigree that’s flaunted before each screening through a short reel...

Within the sports movies subgenre, there have been tons of baseball movies made over the decades. It is America's pastime, after all! There's even an entire book published this month about baseball movies and their legacy. So it would seem as if we've seen it all – every kind of baseball movie has been made before by someone at some point; even Richard Linklater made a modern classic a few years ago (called Everybody Wants Some) and we featured a video edit of the best movies. Lo and behold, we have another classic that has just come up to bat. Carson Lund's Eephus is a baseball movie we've never seen before. And it's genius. It's an "old dudes play ball" indie comedy and it's hilarious. I laughed my ass off watching this, it's more fun than actually going to a ball game, and there's plenty to analyze about what's happening...

Yogi Berra, perhaps the greatest catcher in history, is quoted in Carson Lund’s “Eephus,” a movie about players who, unlike Berra, are never going to trouble the Baseball Hall of Fame’s induction committee. To homage so lofty a legend in so humble a film is a pretty big swing. But one likes to think Berra would be tickled by the shout-out in this lovely little sundowner movie, during which a bunch of middle-aged casual players use the excuse of the last game of their season — and perhaps ever — to valiantly fight the dying of the light. After all, wasn’t he the guy who coined “The future ain’t what it used to be”?

The future sure looks different, suddenly, for the Adler’s Paint and Riverdogs adult-league teams who have played regularly at Soldier’s Field, the public pitch serving their small New England town, for years.

American filmmaker collective Omnes Films, in Cannes with Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve At Miller’s Point and Carson Lund’s Eephus in Directors’ Fortnight, has shared first details about its expanding slate.

Lorena Alvarado’s Venezuela-set Los Capítulos Perdidos tells of a young woman who returns to Venezuela where her grandmother is losing her memory and her father assembles a rare books collection. Alvarado’s family members play fictionalised versions of themselves.

Alexandra Simpson’s feature debut No Sleep Till takes place in a coastal Florida town threatened by an approaching hurricane where the locals insist on staying in their homes.

“Please stop me if any of the terms don’t make sense.” A few days before his feature debut, Eephus, will premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight, Carson Lund is sitting on a rooftop terrace in Cannes and worrying I may not catch all the jargon. Understandably. A chronicle of the last baseball game played at Soldiers Field in Douglas, Ma before the grounds will be paved over and replaced by a middle school, the chat’s testing my—admittedly limited—knowledge of the sport. Yet how you’ll respond to Lund’s wistful film won’t depend on your level of inside baseball. It will depend on […]

The post “I’ve Always Been Interested in Making My Own Version of Goodbye Dragon Inn: Director Carson Lund on His Cannes-Premiering Eephus first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“Please stop me if any of the terms don’t make sense.” A few days before his feature debut, Eephus, will premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight, Carson Lund is sitting on a rooftop terrace in Cannes and worrying I may not catch all the jargon. Understandably. A chronicle of the last baseball game played at Soldiers Field in Douglas, Ma before the grounds will be paved over and replaced by a middle school, the chat’s testing my—admittedly limited—knowledge of the sport. Yet how you’ll respond to Lund’s wistful film won’t depend on your level of inside baseball. It will depend on […]

The post “I’ve Always Been Interested in Making My Own Version of Goodbye Dragon Inn: Director Carson Lund on His Cannes-Premiering Eephus first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In front of empty wooden bleachers on a late summer day in Massachusetts, two squads of out-of-shape, middle-aged men show up to play a game of baseball on what they all expect to be one of their saddest afternoons in recent memory. For decades, this recreational league has been the social glue that binds the men in this community together. But it’s all about to disappear when the local field is destroyed after the season, which ends today. So the men load their coolers up with cheap beer, spend copious amounts of time stretching, and prepare to give their summer haven a glorious send-off before they have to find something else to do with their weekends.

Carson Lund’s directorial debut shares its name with a slow-moving pitch that has largely been forgotten by modern baseball players — and it’s a fitting title for a film that embraces the...

If the perfect sports movie illuminates the fundamentals that make one fall in love with the game, there may be no better movie about baseball than Carson Lund’s Eephus. Structured solely around a single round of America’s national pastime, Lund’s debut feature beautifully, humorously articulates the particular nuances, rhythms, and details of an amateur men’s league game. By subverting tropes of the standard sports movie––which often captures peak physical performance in front of legions of adoring fans––Lund has crafted something far more singularly compelling. Rather than grand slams and no-hitters, there are errors aplenty and no shortage of beer guts and weathered muscles amongst the motley crew. Lund is more interested in examining the peculiar set of social codes that only apply when one is on the field, unimpeded by life’s responsibilities and entirely focused on the rules of the game.

Carrying an...

Most baseball movies are not, per se, about baseball. To take some examples: The Natural is about a prodigy overcoming trauma; Eight Men Out is about greed and corruption; Bad News Bears is a foul-mouthed coming-of-age flick; Bull Durham is all about Kevin Costner’s sex appeal; Moneyball carries the sport into the information age; and Field of Dreams (Costner, again) is haunted by the ghosts of baseball past.

First-time director Carson Lund clearly had this in mind when he made his feature debut Eephus, a movie steeped in nostalgia for the game itself, as well as what it represents for a bunch of men past their prime: the long afternoons in the sun, the trash-talking at the plate, the brewskies in the cooler and the kind of camaraderie you can only find in the dugout.

In many ways, this existential and increasingly surreal indie effort, which seems to be...

It’s the holidays, and strings of gaudy rainbow lights twinkle from gables. In cozy living rooms, the elders doze in their chairs while middle-aged siblings bicker and booze it up around the dining table. Little kids squirm in makeshift beds trying to stay awake for Santa, while truculent teenagers sneak out into the suburban night to do secret teenager things. Ok, so there are no chestnuts roasting on an open fire — instead there is a salad bowl full of red and green M&Ms — but in almost every other respect, Tyler Taormina’s delightful stocking-stuffer “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” is as alive to the domesticated magic of the season as a classic carol. Taormina’s fondly multivalent, Millennial-Norman-Rockwell perspective incorporates a child’s experience of the holiday, overlaid with a teen’s and a parent’s and a grandparent’s and so on. It feels as though...

Three features into his filmmaking career, it’s evident that director Tyler Taormina loves faces — though not in the way of Bergman or Cassavetes. Unlike those art house paragons, he doesn’t isolate his characters in order to peer intently into their souls. He collects faces by the dozen and dreams up crowded tableaus.

His debut film, Ham on Rye, presented a mysterious and unsettling teen ritual in which the faces never connected to conventional stories. Five years later, Taormina is still inspired by group dynamics, and he’s still experimenting with the fusion of aesthetics and storytelling, but this time on more familiar terrain. Veering at times into sensory overload as it reconfigures the holiday-gathering template, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point can feel like a party that refuses to end, one that could have used some judicious streamlining. But it’s a memorably adventurous party, fueled by intense hopefulness,...

“Half the time I was directing, I also had a glove on my hand,” says filmmaker Carson Lund of making his feature directorial debut with the Cannes title Eephus.

The film, which is premiering in Directors’ Fortnight and is being sold worldwide by Film Constellation, follows a men’s New England recreational baseball team as they play their final game on their longtime field before its planned demolition.

From Pride of the Yankees to Bull Durham to Moneyball, baseball has a long and varied onscreen tradition. For his part, Lund wanted to take a different approach. “No baseball film, I feel, has ever really captured the rhythms of the game and what it feels like to actually play it,” says the director. “A lot of these films are ultimately about single characters, protagonists who are undergoing some sort of transformation and self-enlightenment over the course of a narrative. It’s...

European production and sales studio Vuelta Group has bought German producer Telepool from Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook.

The deal, struck through Vuelta subsidiary SquareOne, will see a combined business operating under the SquareOne banner. SquareOne and Vuelta Group Germany CEO Al Munteanu will lead the banner, with Michael Heyd serving as CFO and COO.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but the combined group will boast a library of over 1,200 titles such as Drive, Intouchables, Olympus Has Fallen, Transporter 3 and the recently released One Life. It will form part of the growing Vuelta Group, which in July last year we revealed had formed through the acquisitions of SquareOne, Paris-based international sales firm Playtime Group and Nordic distributor-producer Scanbox.

Vuelta Group Chairman Jeromt Levy, who launched the group with $50M backing from an unnamed U.S. private equity firm, announced the news today along with Munteanu.

German distributor-producer SquareOne Entertainment, part of rising European film studio Vuelta Group, has acquired German film and TV production, distribution and licensing company Telepool, which was owned by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook.

The news was announced Wednesday by Vuelta Group chairman Jerome Levy and CEO of SquareOne and Vuelta Group Germany Al Munteanu.

Munteanu will spearhead the newly combined entity under the SquareOne banner with Michael Heyd serving as CFO/COO.

The newly combined SquareOne entity will boast a library consisting of over 1,200 titles such as “Drive,” “Intouchables,” “The Olympus Has Fallen,” “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” “Imitation Game,” “Lone Survivor,” “Book Club,” “Transporter 3,” “King Richard,” “Maurice the Tomcat” and the recently released “One Life” among others.

“For over 60 years, Telepool has been one of the leading global content houses and we are proud of the work we did with the company,” said Westbrook CEO Kosaku Yada.

This holiday season is one where the offspring of iconic Hollywood families come together, apparently.

“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” which is set to debut in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes, stars Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg, two film stars in their own rite who hail from respective auteurs Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

Decade-plus indie staple Michael Cera leads the latest feature directed by Tyler Taormina; Cera also produces the ensemble family dramedy that marks Taormina’s follow-up to his 2019 coming-of-age comedy “Ham on Rye.”

Set during one Christmas Eve, a family gathers for what could be the last holiday in their ancestral home. As the night wears on and generational tensions arise, one of the teenagers sneaks out with her friends to claim the wintry suburb for her own, per the official synopsis. Cera is seen donning a cop uniform in one of the first look images,...

London- and Paris-based production, finance and sales outfit Film Constellation has boarded international sales on Titus Kaphar’s drama “Exhibiting Forgiveness.”

The film received strong reviews after its January premiere at Sundance in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section, and was picked up for North American distribution by Roadside Attractions, with plans for a wide theatrical release in the fall and awards campaign.

Film Constellation will screen the film for buyers in Cannes.

In the film, an artist finds his path to success derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, a troubled man desperate to reconcile. Together, they learn that forgetting may be harder than forgiving.

The directorial debut of visual artist Kaphar, “Exhibiting Forgiveness” stars André Holland, Andra Day, John Earl Jelks and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

Variety’s Owen Gleiberman gave the film a positive review, describing it as “a forceful drama free of feel-good fakery” and praising Holland’s performance as “fierce,...

Sales and production house Film Constellation is launching world sales rights on U.S. comedy drama “Eephus,” directed by Carson Lund, set to world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight section in Cannes in May.

In the film, as an imminent construction project looms over a beloved small-town baseball field, a pair of New England Sunday league teams face off for the last time over the course of a day. Tensions flare up and ceremonial laughs are shared as an era of camaraderie and escapism fades into an uncertain future.

“Eephus” is the feature directorial debut of American filmmaker Lund, who also has a cinematography credit on another Directors’ Fortnight title, “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”

“Eephus” is produced by Lund, Tyler Taormina, Michael Basta, David Entin and Gabe Klinger for U.S.-based Omnes Films, in collaboration with executive producers Michael Tonelli, Ashish Shetty, Brian Clark and Jim Christman of Magmys.

Following the main lineups for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, a handful of sidebar slates have been unveiled, featuring Directors Fortnight, Critics Week, and Acid. Notable highlights include the Sundance favorite Good One (read our review here), Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point starring Michael Cera, the first film in over a decade from James White director Josh Mond, the Christopher Abbott-led It Doesn’t Matter, Eat the Night from Jessica Forever duo Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel, Carson Lund’s Eephus, Patricia Mazuy’s Visting Hours, The Hyperboreans, a new film from The Wolf House directors Cristobal Leo & Joaquin Cocina, Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century follow-up Universal Language, and more.

Check out the lineups below.

Cannes Directors Fortnight

Feature films:

“Ma Vie Ma Gueule,” Sophie Fillieres (France) – opening film

“A Son Image,” Thierry de Peretti (France)

“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” Tyler Taormina (USA)

“Desert of Namibia,...

The Cannes Directors’ Fortnight section has unveiled its lineup for the 2024 festival, which will open with This Life of Mine, the final feature from the late French director Sophie Fillières. The drama features Agnès Jaoui as a woman whose identity starts to unravel when she turns 55. Fillières died shortly after wrapping principal photography on the film and her children finished post-production.

There are four U.S. titles in the feature section of the non-competitive sidebar: Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point, Carson Lund’s Eephus, India Donaldson’s Good One and Gazer from Ryan J. Sloan.

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, starring Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Francesca Scorsese. Ben Shenkman, Gregg Turkington, Sawyer Spielberg, Maria Dizzia and newcomer Matilda Fleming, follows four generations as they gather for what might be their last Christmas in the family home. Lund, who lensed Christmas Eve, makes his feature debut with Eephus,...

The 77th edition of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight will kick off with “This Life of Mine,” a dramedy directed by Sophie Fillières, a renowned French filmmaker who died last year. Presented posthumously, the film is headlined by French stars including Agnès Jaoui, Philippe Katerine and Valérie Donzelli. The independent selection, which has recently gone through a rebranding and is now spearheaded by artistic director Julien Rejl, will close with another French film, Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s “Plastic Guns,” an offbeat crime comedy headlined by popular actor Jonathan Cohen.

The lineup includes as many as four U.S. features, three of which are feature debuts, including India Donaldson’s coming-of-age film”Good One” which premiered at Sundance and garnered solid reviews. Set in upstate New York, “Good One” follows 17-year-old Sam as she joins her father and his oldest friend, Matt, on their annual backpacking trip in the Catskill Mountains. “Good One” has...

Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled the selection for its 56th edition heavy on films from first-time US filmmakers, South American titles, and talent including Isabelle Huppert, Michael Cera and Agnès Jaoui.

Artistic director Julien Rejl revealed the line-up at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday (April 16) for the Cannes parallel section run by French directors guild the Srf.

Scroll down for the full selection

After undergoing a complete rebranding for last year’s edition complete with new artistic director Rejl and a new more inclusive female-forward name in French to La Quinzaine des Cinéastes, this year’s selection includes eight...

Cannes parallel section Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled the line-up for its 56th edition running from May 15 to 23, at a press conference in Paris’ Forum des Images cultural center.

The section, launched in 1969 and overseen by the French Directors Guild, will present 21 feature films and 10 short films.

It is the second line-up overseen by Delegate General Julien Rejl, who took up the role last year.

Discoveries of his inaugural edition included Georgian director Elene Naveriani’s late coming-of-age drama Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry; U.S. indie film Riddle Of Fire by Weston Razooli, as well as Vietnamese filmmaker Phạm Thiên Ân’s 2023 Cannes Caméra d’Or winner Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell.

The 2024 edition will open with late director Sophie Fillières’ final feature This Life of Mine, starring Agnès Jaoui as a woman whose sense of self starts to unravel as she turns 55.

Fillières died shortly after completing the shoot and her...