The final day at the Middleburg Film Festival felt refreshingly low-key, a welcome breather after the whirlwind of films, panels, and parties. Don’t get me wrong, those days are fantastic, too. But by day four, it was nice to just sink into the silver screen, catching three films that were first-time viewings for me. Kicking things off was Bradley Cooper's newest directorial venture, …

The Cycle of Love and The Voice of Hind Rajab are top documentary and international winners, respectively The Middleburg Film Festival announced its 2025 Audience Award winners, recognizing the films that resonated most with filmgoers following the conclusion of the 13th annual, four-day festival on Sunday, October 19. MFF’s Saturday Centerpiece film Hamnet and the Closing Film Rental Family have tied for the Audience Award for Narrative Feature.

When you think of some of film history’s most iconic costumes, the work of Colleen Atwood likely comes to mind. From Hannibal Lecter’s chilling mask to Edward Scissorhands’ bladed fingers, Atwood has created some of the most enduring cinematic creations. What makes Atwood such a titan amongst her peers (and the industry as a whole) is that her detailed work illuminates the character wearing it, adding new facets that may have potentially gone unnoticed.

Not much to change in Adapted although I do wonder if No Other Choice and Bugonia mining some similar, or at least adjacent, territory and tone might bleed from each other, allowing Train Dreams to break in. For Original, I'm dropping Rental Family and moving The Testament of Ann Lee up. Feel mostly confident about the top four there but wonder how much a fight…

General Hospital was the big winner of the 52nd Daytime Emmy Awards, with seven wins including Outstanding Daytime Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Performance in a Daytime Drama Series: Actress for Nancy Lee Grahn, Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Daytime Drama Series: Actor for Jonathan Jackson, Outstanding Directing Team for a Daytime Drama Series and Outstanding Writing Team for a Daytime Drama Series.

The story of Christy Martin, nee Salters, surely wasn’t an easy or straightforward one to tell, yet its difficult and all too real subject matter makes for an eye-opening experience that ultimately showcases the power of perseverance, resilience, and love. David Michôd (The King) doesn’t shy away from the hardships this world-renowned boxer, in a transformative performance by Sydney Sweeney (HBO's…

I opened day three at Middleburg with one of their signature events: Talk Back to the Critics. Mae Abdulbaki (Screen Rant), Jen Chaney (NY Times), Tim Gordon (Keeping it Reel with FilmGordon), Roxana Hadadi (Vulture), Nell Minow (RogerEbert.com), and Travis Hopson (Punch Drunk Critics) made up an eclectic panel that led a conversation on all the great experiences they’ve had at Middleburg over the years, several of them attending since the start thirteen years ago.

Nestled in the rolling hills of Virginia's Loudoun County, the Middleburg Film Festival feels like a not-so-secret handshake among cinephiles from the South Atlantic states. Each year, it's easy to meet and speak to folks from all walks of life. Maryland day-trippers, North Carolinians on a fall getaway, West Virginians chasing the open road, and D.C. locals ditching the Beltway chaos and bustling of tourists.

Here is an exclusive first look at Academy Award winner Sissy Spacek and Robert Pattinson from Lynne Ramsay's latest film, Die My Love. The film world premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and will be released theatrically by MUBI on November 7, 2025. In the film, Grace (Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Pattinson) move from New York City to rural Montana to have their first child. As her creative identity disappears under the pressures of motherhood, the banality of domestic life, and the terrors of desire, Grace begins to unravel.

As solid as a top 3 can be in almost any category this season, but I'm moving things around a bit. With One Battle After Another and Hamnet arguably being the top 2 films, Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value) will likely have to run the game all the way through, similar to a veteran like Christopher Plummer, to find himself the winner in March.

In her first piece for AwardsWatch, Mariane Tremblay looks at the response to After the Hunt after its festival run and takes the side of it being a misunderstood masterpiece. "Who do you believe?" — that’s the headline Variety used for one of its articles on Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt. After reading it, you might pause and think how wrong that sounds, given the film's subject, but if you’ve seen it or overheard the uncomfortable conversations as people leave the theatre, you know just how fitting and provocative it is.

Although we can all agree that autumn is the spookiest time of year, winter is perhaps the best season when it comes to immediately giving a film a chilling, dangerous feeling. Just think how many incredible, iconic horror movies are set against a snowy backdrop - The Thing, The Shining, Misery…Black Phone 2 is not one of them.

Supporting Actress has lost a contender for October in Chase Infiniti. The One Battle After Another ingenue has been announced to be campaigned as lead actress, leaving her co-star mother Teyana Taylor a wide berth at the top spot and opening the door for Regina Hall to have a shot. Marty Supreme was the NYFF secret screening and we got our first look at Gwyneth Paltrow's hopes of returning to the Oscars, who hasn't been nominated since her Best Actress win for 1998's…

Today, SFFILM announced the lineup for the 11th Doc Stories film festival. The main program includes ten features and 12 short films, including new films from Academy Award winners Laura Poitras (Cover-Up) and Ben Proudfoot (The Eyes of Ghana). The four-day festival of nonfiction filmmaking takes place at the Vogue Theatre in San Francisco, November 6–9, 2025.

A triple threat of shortlisted aural categories, today looks at Original Score, Original Song and Sound. With a shortlist of 20, Original Score has the widest reach of any category and this season will be filled with previous winners like Ludwig Göransson, Alexandre Desplat, Volker Bertelmann, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Hans Zimmer and Daniel Blumberg alongside previous nominees like Nicholas Britell, Jonny Greenwood and Jerskin Fendrix.

Photo © Tommy Lau Photography The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) presented Eva Victor with the Mind the Gap Award during their 48th edition. As per the festival, this award, “honors those whose work has helped close the gender gap in the film industry and in our lives through their art and advocacy.” Mind the Gap was instituted by the California Film Institute in 2015 as part of the festival’s aims to increase the presence of female-directed films within their film slate, with filmmaker Angela Robinson being the inaugural honoree of this award in 2017.

The DOC NYC Short List for documentary features was revealed today and includes some of the year's most talked about titles. 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Cover-Up, Orwell: 2+2=5, Mr. Nobody Against Putin and The Perfect Neighbor are among the films that will hit the festival next month. The festival will run its main lineup of 116 features, 30 world premieres, 34 U.S.

Today, the 48th Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF48) has announced the winners of its Audience Awards after officially wrapping on Sunday, October 12. Chloé Zhao's Hamnet, which opened the festival on October 2, was the Overall Audience Favorite. This follows the TIFF People's Choice win at the Toronto International Film Festival and its double wins at Telluride from both press & industry and general audiences.

The Critics Choice Association (CCA) has announced the nominees for the Tenth Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards (CCDA) where Raoul Peck's Orwell: 2+2=5 and Geeta Gandbhir's The Perfect Neighbor led the way. The winners will be revealed at a gala event on Sunday, November 9, 2025 at The Edison Ballroom in Manhattan and hosted by award-winning actor, writer, and producer Aasif Mandvi.

The European Film Academy revealed the shortlist of 67 films that will be in contention for its EFA Awards, which will announce its nominations on November 18, including high profile Cannes winners and potential Oscar contenders in the International Feature Film category and more. The shortlist includes 44 feature films, 15 documentary films and eight animated feature films. While expected mentions of titles like Joachim Trier's Cannes Grand Prize winner…

Continuing the below the line predictions for October brings us to more categories that receive shortlist attention before Oscar nomination voting begins: Makeup and Hairstyling and Visual Effects. We can certainly expect the return of Wicked, which earned a nomination here last year for the first film, to show up for its sequel, Wicked: For Good. But the extraordinarily complicated makeup application of Jacob Elordi's creature makeup in…

On episode 310 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Associate Editor Sophia Ciminello is joined by Editor-In-Chief Erik Anderson and Executive Editor Ryan McQuade to chat about the 63rd edition of the New York Film Festival and two below-the-line Oscar categories. First, the gang shares their overall experience at the festival before diving into quick reviews on the World Premieres of Anemone…

In a heated year for international films, NEON has dominated the conversation with its extensive slate of hot festival picks. Preserving their Palme d’Or-winning streak, their purchasing of Cannes’ hottest titles means wide releases and notable awards prospects for a greater crop of world cinema. Sentimental Value, which the distributor has been backing since its production last year, has stayed a guarantee within both year-end lists and Oscar contention since its premiere and Grand Prize win at Cannes, with many even predicting a Supporting Actor win for Stellan Skarsgård.

Three major 2025 releases highlight the releases coming home on physical media this week, featuring one of the best films of the year. First up is the latest, and potentially last, entry into the Mission Impossible franchise, The Final Reckoning, which finds Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) doing everything he can to stop The Entity from taking over the planet and releasing it into nuclear annihilation.