Tom Dunlap is joining Deutsch LA as senior VP, director of integrated production. He formerly was director of integrated production at Wieden+Kennedy, Amsterdam, where his credits including serving as exec producer/producer on the lauded “Happiness Factory” spot for Coca-Cola….Director Daniel Benmayor has come aboard bicoastal Anonymous Content….Rockhard Films, West Hollywood, has signed director Rob Pearlstein whose Our Time Is Up received an Oscar nomination for best live-action short. Pearlstein first established himself in the industry as an agency creative….Executive producer Lisa Rich is joining bicoastal Smuggler in the newly formed company role of COO….Sound artist Herwig Maurer, known for his work on the feature Apocalypto, has joined the roster of Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Visual Music for spot representation….Editor Carrie Shanahan has come aboard Crash & Sue’s, Minneapolis. She earlier freelanced in New York and then was on the roster of Minneapolis-based Uppercut….Atlanta-based Crawford Post Production has hired Basil Iskandrian as creative director/designer. Iskandrian served previously as a senior video designer at Moxie Interactive, Atlanta, and a motion designer/After Effects artist at Spin Productions, Atlanta….
“Atropia” and “Twinless” Win Marquee Prizes At Sundance Film Festival
The war satire “Atropia,” about actors in a military role-playing facility, won the grand jury prize in the Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. dramatic competition, while the Dylan O’Brien movie “Twinless” got the coveted audience award.
Juries and programmers for the 41st edition of the independent film festival announced the major prizewinners Friday in Park City, Utah.
Other grand jury winners included the documentaries “Seeds,” about farmers in rural Georgia and “Cutting Through the Rocks,” about the first elected councilwoman in an Iranian village. The Indian drama “Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears),” about a city dweller mourning his father in the western Indian countryside, won the top prize in the world cinema competition.
“It’s for my dad,” said writer and director Rohan Parashuram Kanawade. His late father, he said, was the one who encouraged him to pursue filmmaking.
Audiences also get to vote on their own awards, where James Sweeney’s “Twinless,” about the bromance between two men who meet in a twin bereavement support group, triumphed in the U.S. dramatic category. O’Brien also won a special jury award for his acting.
The U.S. documentary audience award went to “André is an Idiot,” a life-affirming film about dying of colon cancer. Other audience picks were “Prime Minister,” about former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and “DJ Ahmet,” a coming-of-age film about a 15-year-old boy in North Macedonia.
Mstyslav Chernov, the Oscar-winning Associated Press journalist, won the world cinema documentary directing award for his latest dispatch from Ukraine, “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” a joint production between the AP and PBS Frontline.
“Here’s to all... Read More