Interview:
Casey Baron,
senior film programmer,
Rob Gonzalez,
film competition director,
Colin Hyer,
conference director,
Austin Film Festival
![]() This year’s Austin Film Festival will run Oct. 24-31 at various local venues, with the screenwriting conference running Oct. 24-27. The Austin Film Festival opens Oct. 24 with the drama The Obituary of Tunde Johnson and closes Oct. 31 with the fact-based legal drama Just Mercy. Trey Edward Shults’ Waves will screen Oct. 28 as the festival’s Centerpiece Film. Other prominent films—many of them likely to be Oscar contenders—include Atlantics, Clemency, Ford v Ferrari, Harriet, Honeyboy, Marriage Story, Motherless Brooklyn, Portrait of a Lay on Fire, The Report, The Truth, andThe Two Popes. Films with Austin ties include director Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, Apartment 413, Cowboys, I’ve Got Issues, A Room Full of Nothing, and When We Last Spoke. Pre-Halloween Dark Matters offerings include Macabre, Noise, A Patient Man, Rattlesnake, Skyman, Sleeping in Plastic, Swing Low, and The Wretched. Other genre offerings include Into the Dark: Pilgrim and The VICE Guide to Bigfoot. Documentaries include Flannery, Guest House, Making Apes: The Artists Who Changed Film, Pipe Dreams, and Meg Kasdan and Lawrence Kasdan's Last Week at Ed's. Retrospective screenings include Akeelah and the Bee, presented by writer/director Doug Atchison; The Blair Witch Project, presented by co-writer/co-director Daniel Myrick; Race to Witch Mountain, presented by co-star Alexander Ludwig; and What Dreams May Come, presented by writer Ron Bass. The Austin Film Festival will honor screenwriter/director James Ivory with its Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award, Ron Bass with its Bill Wittliff Award for Screenwriting, Game of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss with its Outstanding Television Writer Award, screenwriter/director Daniel Petrie, Jr. with its Heart of Film Award, the Austin-based Sarah Green with its Polly Platt Award for Producing, and Catherine Reitman with its New Voice Award. The screening conference will include conversations with Barry cocreator Alec Berg, Body Heat and The Big Chill director Laurence Kasdan, Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin, Destroyer screenwriter Phil Hay, The Farewell writer/director Lulu Wang, Five Feet Tall screenwriters Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis, GLOW co-creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, The Good Place writer Megan Amram, Josie and the Pussycats directors Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, The Post and Long Shot screenwriter Liz Hannah, Mudbound screenwriter Virgil Williams, Rattlesnake director Zak Hilditch, Suspira screenwriter Dave Kajganich, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before screenwriter Sofia Alvarez, and Veep showrunner David Mandel. The conference also will include panels devoted to Beverly Hills Cop, Eighth Grade,and the Powerhouse Animation Studio Netflix series Seis Manos. Aired: Oct. 17, 2017 Web site: http://www.austinfilmfestival.com/ |
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