Alfonso Cuarón, writer-director-producer of the anticipated Netflix film Roma, got a laugh from the Contenders audience Saturday at the DGA Theater when moderator Joe Utichi asked him about "discovering" Yalitza Aparicio, an aspiring teacher who appeared in the film in her first screen role. "I didn't find her — she…

Growing up with a journalist for a mother and making his name as an Oscar-nominated documentarian — behind the likes of Cartel Land and City of Ghosts — Matthew Heineman makes his narrative feature debut with Aviron Pictures' A Private War. As an artist with a journalist's eye for meaningful, real-world stories and a…

Warner Bros brought out the big guns for Deadline’s Contenders LA confab with A Star Is Born director/co-writer/producer/star Bradley Cooper and cinematographer Matthew Libatique as well as stars Constance Wu, Henry Golding and Michelle Yeoh from the hit romcom Crazy Rich Asians. Cooper, who is coming off of a…

At Deadline’s The Contenders Los Angeles today, Annapurna Pictures showed off two dramas from their impressive awards-season slate, and a unifying concern emerged: The American Dream, and the ways it has changed over time. While members of the privileged class have bent it into a new, baser shape, for those less…

At today's The Contenders LA event, Universal Pictures took the audience rocketing back to the 1960s by presenting panels on two very different historical films: First Man and Green Book. First Man tells the well-known story of Neil Armstrong's journey to becoming the first man to walk on the moon, in 1969. The…

This awards season — to quote Sam Cooke — a change is gonna come, courtesy of Focus Features. Today at Deadline’s The Contenders Los Angeles, the distributor presented two of its timely contenders in Boy Erased (which bowed in theaters Friday) and AFI Fest opener On the Basis of Sex, dramas that concern themselves…