Latest in AFI Fest

AFI Fest on Wednesday officially announced dates and a call for entries for its 36th edition, which will take place in Los Angeles from November 2-6, 2022.  Entries open today and filmmakers are invited to submit fiction, documentary, experimental and animated short films. Once again placing the fest in the heart of…

AFI Fest on Monday announced the films that received this year's awards, with Clint Bentley’s Jockey from Sony Pictures Classics and the Tommy Oliver-directed Juice Wrld taking the narrative and documentary Audience Awards, respectively. The Grand Jury Award winners for Live Action and Animated Short will be eligible…

Halle Berry’s feature directorial debut, Bruised, actually premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival as a “work in progress.” It was picked up by Netflix with the idea of completing the film as close to Berry’s initial vision as possible. More than a year later, the finished pic has premiered at yet…

Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures’ Sing 2 will make its world premiere at AFI Fest, screening in-person at the TCL Chinese Theatre on November 14, the American Film Institute announced today. The film hitting theaters on December 22 is a sequel to animated musical comedy Sing, which grossed $634…

NBC News’ Meet the Press Film Festival will move to Los Angeles this year and will be part of the AFI Fest next month. The Nov. 11 event, a showcase for documentary shorts, will include in-person and online screenings. It’s previously taken place in Washington, D.C., where the network’s Meet the Press is based. On…

After opening the Venice Film Festival and continuing on to the New York Film Festival, Oscar winner Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers from Sony Pictures Classics will have a red-carpet premiere at this year’s AFI Fest at the TCL Chinese Theatre on Saturday, Nov. 13. In the movie, two women, Janis and Ana, played…

The American Film Institute said Tuesday that it has added the world premieres of Apple Original Films’ Swan Song, starring two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali, and Halle Berry’s directorial debut Bruised from Netflix to this year’s AFI Fest lineup. When Netflix picked up Bruised at the Toronto Film Festival last…

Warner Bros’ King Richard, the Will Smith-starring drama about Serena and Venus Williams’ father and how he raised a pair of tennis champions, will close AFI Fest this fall. Organizer American Film Institute said Wednesday that the pic, which world premiered earlier this month at the Telluride Film Festival, will wrap…

As the fall festivals Venice, Telluride and Toronto, as well as New York and London continue to evolve in the surging Covid environment, AFI Fest has announced it is moving full speed ahead. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s feature directorial debut, tick, tick…BOOM! from Netflix will be the opening-night world premiere on…

AFI Fest on Friday announced the winners of its jury and audience awards, with marquee honors going to Secret of Kells duo Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart’s animated Wolfwalkers, which won the audience award for narrative feature, and 76 Days, the documentary about the first days of the COVID-19 virus in China, taking the…

For at least some of us who lived through the counter-culture/psychedelic era of the late '60s and early '70s, Timothy Leary was one of the most annoying or, at least, equivocal figures of a time that hardly lacked for colorful characters. The most famous utterance of this often articulate, madly attention-seeking…

Right from the opening images of a unrecognizable, long-haired, darkly blond Rachel Brosnahan laying on a lounge chair with oversized dark glasses as we hear Bobbie Gentry’s lilting ’70s song, “I Wouldn’t Be Surprised” play on the soundtrack, I have to admit that tonight’s AFI Fest opener I’m Your Woman had me at…