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Two newly released documentaries, each rooted in home video footage from the early 2000s, illustrate the manner in which personally documented memories can be used in a foundational way to craft nonfiction films that plumb universally relatable themes. While their specific narratives diverge, Anonymous Sister and Sam Now each unpack incredibly engaging and affecting stories of family trauma — and the scars that can develop from secrets closely held, and conversations not had.

Before the word “gay” took roots in our daily life – and before we began to see movies featuring women, men and all variations of the word “gender” in all kinds of styles – the powerful engine of the industry of visual entertainment was often driven by filmmakers who, even at the dawn of Hollywood, were themselves gay. The word was mentioned rarely and only in private, but the entertainment machine was constantly affected by smart and daring gay filmmakers, creating hit pictures and beginning significant conversations between the story on the screen and the audience in the dark.

Zerocalcare is the pen name of Italian cartoonist Michel Rech. His second animated series This World Won't Make Me Evil started streaming on Netflix on June 9, 2023, in the United States and 190 countries around the world, following his successful first series Tear Along the Dotted Line, which debuted internationally on November 17, 2021, after its premiere at the Rome Film Festival on October 17.

In a world where cinema continues to push boundaries and break new ground, a fresh voice emerges from Morocco: Asmae el Moudir. This rising female filmmaker has recently catapulted into the limelight, winning the esteemed Best Director award at the Un Certain Regard in Cannes International Film Festival 2023 for her film, The Mother of All Lies.

It’s been three decades since the legendary situation comedy series Cheers had its final curtain call in the spring of 1993 after 11 seasons, during which the show won an impressive tally of 28 Emmy Awards and six Golden Globes, including one for Best Television Series – Comedy or Musical in 1992. Just in time to commemorate its anniversary, this year’s ATX TV Festival hosted a reunion event that brought together stars Ted Danson, George Wendt and John Ratzenberger, along with screenwriters and producers, brothers Glen and Les Charles, and the highly regarded television director James Burrows, all three of whom co-created the show in the early 1980s after having worked together on a previous successful comedy series, Taxi, which starred Judd Hirsch, Danny DeVito, Tony Danza and Marilu Henner.

Dalíland is the fantastical world in which Salvador Dalí lives, as seen through the eyes of his newly hired young assistant James, when he steps into the Spanish painter’s lavish suite at the St Regis Hotel in New York City to find it crowded with colorful characters dancing and drinking champagne. The year is 1974.

In the 1981 book, “The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies,” film historian Vito Russo traces the history of queer representation in the movies. The book was adapted into a documentary of the same name in 1995 by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and was shown extensively on HBO.

At the beginning of the film, the situation looks perfect. An affectionate and good-looking couple lives in a beautifully styled home and shares a quick kiss.

The irony was not lost on Alice Englert – writer, director and star of the dark comedy Bad Behaviour – that her Sydney Film Festival premiere was taking place within the same program that featured a film retrospective devoted to her mother, Jane Campion. “It does feel kind of insane,” Englert told the Sydney Morning Herald of the festival’s family affair.

Emotions were running high on the red carpet at the premiere of Banel & Adama by Ramata-Toulaye Sy. It was completely understandable.