News

  • Festivals

Docs: Angus McDonald on “Freedom is Beautiful” at Sydney Film Festival

The documentary feature, Freedom is Beautiful, focuses on two remarkable Kurdish Iranian asylum seekers who are musicians, artists, poets and close friends. Farhad Bandesh and Mostafa ‘Moz’ Azimitibar were also freed within a month of each other, in 2020, after each having spent eight years locked up in brutal refugee camps on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and a Melbourne detention center run by the Australian Government.
  • Interviews

Whitney Cummings Talks About Getting Inside a Victim

“How do you respond when the great Howard Gordon (Homeland, 24) says, ‘We’ve a role for you,’ then describes the character as, ‘A mess who makes terrible decisions with men and is not a funny comedian…?’” So asks comedian Whitney Cummings of the packed theater in West Hollywood at the THR Live event, pausing with perfect timing so the audience’s laughter won’t drown out her next words. The circumstances faced by her character on Fox’s Accused moved the women’s activist deeply.
  • Film

“Perfect Days”: Portrait of a Simple Man in a Tokyo Story by Wim Wenders

Screened in the official competition at the last Cannes Film Festival in May, Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days is set in Tokyo and follows the quiet and uncomplicated life of Hirayama, a toilet cleaner, played by Koji Yakusho, (this year winner of the Best Actor award). His daily existence consists of driving in his van from job to job, listening to cassettes of classic rock music, as he fastidiously carries out his tasks which he takes much pride in.