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"Don't be afraid. Be brave." Passion River Films is highlighting one of their best releases from this fall, an animated documentary film titled Liyana. This originally premiered in 2017, but since then has picked up over 35 Jury & Audience Awards from numerous festivals all over the world. After playing at various fests for over two years, it's now available to watch on VOD or DVD. Liyana is a genre-defying documentary that tells the story of five children in the Kingdom of Eswatini who turn past trauma into an original fable about a girl named Liyana who embarks on a perilous quest to save her young twin brothers. The film weaves her animated journey together with poetic documentary scenes to create an inspiring tale of perseverance and hope. It looks like an imaginative and inspiring film to discover about the incredible power of storytelling. Here's the official Us trailer (+ original poster) for Aaron & Amanda Kopp's Liyana,...

‘Roma,’ Alfonso Cuaron‘s nostalgic ode to his ’70s childhood in Mexico City, won over the 84-member Alliance of Women Film Journalists — including me. The stunning black-and-white Netflix release pocketed five Eda wins: Best Film, Best Cinematography, Best Non-English Film, Best Editing and Best Director. Coming in second were those cutthroat royals in “The Favourite” with four wins, including Olivia Colman as Best Actress.

The all-female group’s 12th annual competition once again salutes the best – and some of the worst – in the world of film with 25 categories in three sections. There are the general Best of Awards, Female Focus Awards and Eda Special Mention Awards whose nominees are picked by those Awfj members who send in a nominating ballot. There is room for the good, including Viola Davis of “Widows” receiving the “Actress Defying Age and Ageism Award,” and the bad, as in Jennifer Lawrence of “Red Sparrow,” who...

It is through oral storytelling that most key folk tales, myths and histories across African culture have been passed and preserved through the generations. It is by tapping into this rich tradition, meanwhile, that “Liyana” makes authentic a device that might otherwise have seemed cutesy: leaving half its story in the hands, or rather mouths, of five young Swazi orphans, as they collectively weave an epic quest narrative about a resilient tribal girl trying to reunite her family against daunting odds. The rest of Aaron and Amanda Kopp’s short but stout-hearted documentary colors in the challenging reality that shapes the children’s fiction — foremost among them the AIDS epidemic that continues to blight the tiny nation of eSwatini (formerly Swaziland).

“Liyana” uses vibrantly distinctive animation to illustrate the kids’ ongoing, imaginative saga: Fusing static but 3D-sculpted characters with subtly shifting 2D backdrops, this “breathing painting” style lends a picture-book...

Exclusive: Abramorama announced today that they will release the visually imaginative documentary Liyana from directors Amanda Kopp and Aaron Kopp (The Hunting Ground). The film is set to open in New York City on Oct. 10 with a theatrical release slated for select cities in the following weeks.

Executive produced by Westworld‘s Thandie Newton and produced by Academy Award-winning director Daniel Junge (Saving Face), the docu features South African storyteller Gcina Mhlophe guiding us in a narrative about five orphaned children from Swaziland who collaborate to craft a collective fairytale drawn from their darkest memories and brightest dreams. Their titular fictional character, Liyana, is brought to life in innovative animated artwork as she embarks on a perilous quest to rescue her young twin brothers. The children’s real and imagined worlds begin to converge, and they must choose what kind of story they will tell — in fiction and in their own lives.

Paul Schrader’s First Reformed won the top narrative prize at the Montclair Film Festival Saturday night, and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy confirmed he will sign an ambitious tax-incentive bill as a stimulus for film and TV production in the state.

After an introduction by Stephen Colbert (a local resident long tied to the festival), Murphy said, “New Jersey is a world-class location to be the backdrop for any filmmaker – from our small towns, to our big cities, rolling hills, and the Jersey Shore – and we’re ready for our close up. Tonight, through the Montclair Film Festival, we’re sending a message that New Jersey isn’t just a great place to view the arts, but that there isn’t any better place to shoot a film than right here.”

Murphy added, “We have the artists. We have the Art DNA. We have the Film DNA. And so I will tell you,...

Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Ethan Hawke and Rachel Weisz are heading to New Jersey for the seventh annual Montclair Film Festival.

Kicking off on April 26 with Rachel Dretzin’s “Far From the Tree,” the 11-day fest will feature 77 feature films, 94 shorts and 13 special events including panels, master classes and public parties.

Highlights include favorites from the Sundance Film Festival, the Toronto Intl. Film Festival and highly anticipated projects premiering this month at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Sundance hits including Hawke’s music biopic “Blaze,” Brett Haley’s “Hearts Beat Loud” and Morgan Neville’s docu “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” will all screen at Miff. The regional fest will also host Sam Pollard’s “Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me,” Kate Novack’s “The Gospel According to Andre,” and Sebastian Lelio’s “Disobedience” starring Weisz and Rachel McAdams. All three films made their world premiere at Tiff in September.

Outsider Pictures to release in Us on March 23.

Diego Lerman’s A Sort Of Family (Una Especie de Familia) won the $40,000 Knight Competition grand jury prize for best film as Argentine entries flourished at the 35th annual Miami Film Festival.

A Sort Of Family, nominated for eight Argentinian Academy Awards, was joined the winners’ podium by Pablo Solarz’s Argentina-Spain co-production The Last Suit (El Ultimo Traje), which took the audience award for best feature and opens in the Us this week through Outsider Pictures.

The Audience Award for best short film went to The Driver Is Red, a true-crime...

There’s multiple ways to tell stories depending on the message you wish to instill. So when the subject you’re tackling concerns a country like Swaziland with a rampant AIDS epidemic and the resulting insanely high orphanage rate, you can choose a path towards the stark futility of the situation or find a way to unearth the hope that remains despite it. Documentarians Aaron and Amanda Kopp decide to do the latter with Liyana, a unique hybrid wherein fact is projected through a prism of fiction as both a mechanism to educate outsiders and heal from within. They’ve placed their cameras inside an orphanage for children who know little beyond tragedy to watch them turn those devastating experiences into an inspirational work of art that proves their voices matter.

They’re filming a project spearheaded by acclaimed storyteller Gcina Mhlophe, one that asks these lost souls to come...

AIDS, alcoholism, kidnapping and rape — they’re not typical plot elements in the tales children invent. The young storytellers in the deeply moving documentary Liyana aren’t trying to be sensationalistic when they place such obstacles on their fictional heroine’s path; they’re simply drawing on what they know. They’re among the estimated 200,000 orphans in Swaziland, a tiny country with the world’s highest HIV infection rate.

Like their exceptionally charismatic subjects, husband-and-wife filmmakers Aaron Kopp (who grew up in Swaziland) and Amanda Kopp acknowledge these harrowing realities without dwelling on them. The Kopps give the kids center stage, and the...

Liyana is a beautiful, creative and inspiring documentary from Amanda Kopp and Aaron Kopp about a young girl who sets out to rescue her twin brothers from kidnappers. Eight years in the making,...

Five competition sections drew 42% female, 40% non-white directors.

Becks (pictured) directed by Elizabeth Rohrbaugh and Daniel Powell won the U.S. Fiction Award. Lena Hall and Mena Suvari star in the drama about a singer-songwriter who moves in with her ultra-Catholic mother after a break-up and strikes up an unexpected friendship with the wife of an old nemesis.

Mexico’s The Night Guard (El Vigilante) by Diego Ros earned the World Fiction Award and tells of a security guard who becomes embroiled in a mystery surrounding a crime at the construction site he is paid to patrol. Leonardo Alonso, Ari Gallegos,...

The Los Angeles Film Festival that ran from June 14 to June 22 handed out its prizes today. Becks, the story of and inspired by Alyssa Robbins took home the U.S Fiction Award Prize.

Elizabeth Rohrbaugh and Daniel Powers’ Becks, inspired by the life of singer-songwriter Alyssa Robbins, took home the U.S. Fiction Award, and Amanda Kopp and Aaron Kopp’s Liyana, which focuses on a group of orphaned children in Swaziland, claimed the Documentary Award as jury prizes were announced at the Los Angeles Film Festival, which concluded Thursday.

Audience Awards were presented to Karen Moncrieff’s The Keeping Hours, named best fiction feature film, and to Mark Hayes’ Skid Row Marathon for best documentary feature. The latter, a film about a running club organized by Los Angeles Superior Court judge Craig Mitchell,...