Gabriela Pichler's Eat Sleep Die won the Gand Jury Award, at AFI Fest Thursday afternoon, while A Royal Affair by Nikolaj Arcel won the Audience Award in the World Cinema section. Danish filmmaker Tobias Lindholm won the Audience Award among the fest's list of New Auteurs and Only the Young by Jason Tippet received the audience prize among its "Young Americans." David Tosh Gitonga took the Audience nod for "Breakthrough" for Nairobi Half Life.
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Skyfall is ready to get its L.A. close-up at AFI Fest Wednesday night. The latest James Bond film will have a "Secret Screening" tonight at the festival where free tickets are now available. The film, which has been a box office triumph in the U.K. where it opened in late October, has garnered critical acclaim and the title is even getting some early Oscar buzz - a feat that has eluded 007 over its 50 years.
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AFI Fest has been underway for nearly a week with a mixture of Galas, free screenings and other events, but last night it slowed its heavy rotation of movies and activities to watch returns in what can be best described as a mostly liberal party at the festival's Cinema Lounge at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood.
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A moving and emotional powerhouse, Canadian director Kim Nguyen's War Witch packs a punch worthy of the best of conflict thrillers, though more shocking is that the events depicted in the feature, which is Canada's contender for Best Foreign-language Oscar consideration, are happening every day. The story of a teen girl who is kidnapped by Congo rebels after she is forced to execute her parents left audiences aghast at AFI Fest where it screened this week.
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AFI Fest rounded out its 2012 program with films screening in its World Cinema, Breakthrough, Midnight and Shorts sections. Festival favorites The Angels' Share, Greatest Hits, Laurence Anyways, Nairobi Half Life, Pieta, White Elephant and Zaytoun are among the titles set to screen at the L.A. festival, taking place November 1 - 8. As previously announced, the festival will kick off with the world premiere of Hitchcock and will close with the the world premiere of Lincoln.
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AFI Fest is fast approaching and the event unveiled Centerpiece Gala and Special Screenings details with Ang Lee's Life of Pi (3-D) and Walter Salles' On the Road on tap for their West Coast debuts. Peter Ramsey's Rise of the Guardians and Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone will also debut. Bone star Marion Cotillard will receive a tribute during the festival, taking place November 1 - 8. All galas will take place at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
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Only weeks ahead of its world premiere as the opening film at AFI Fest comes a glimpse of Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren starrer, Hitchcock. Like the festival's closing night counterpart, Lincoln, the title will no doubt be an awards-season heavy-weight.
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Also in Wednesday morning's round-up of news briefs: IDFA, the world's biggest documentary film festival picks its opening feature. Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter are set for London Film Festival honors. Wes Anderson adds to his next project. And Ryan Reynolds eyes a psychological thriller.
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AFI Fest released more details for its L.A. event. Selections in its Young Americans and New Auteurs sections highlight emerging U.S. first and second time global filmmakers. As previously announced, the World Premiere of Hitchcock will open the festival, while Lincoln will close out the event, which takes place November 1 - 8 in Los Angeles.
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Also in Thursday's round-up of news briefs, Disney Publishing is planning a book for Tim Burton fans who can't get enough of Frankenweenie. Also this afternoon, a couple of new films that will be heading their way to theaters.
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The 2011 AFI Fest drew to a close Thursday night with the North American public premiere of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, directed, appropriately enough, by AFI-associated Steven Spielberg. Though he was unable to attend in person (much of the crew of Tintin, including Spielberg, was on location filming Lincoln), he sent star Jamie Bell in his stead to introduce the film and play a pre-recorded message for the audience at the Grauman's Chinese, which became so packed festival goers spilled over into a second overflow theater for the premiere.
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AFI Fest closes up shop today (with a very climactic showing of The Adventures of Tintin), but before we say so long to the parking garage at Hollywood & Highland, we have one piece of business left to deal with: the awards. AFI awarded its Grand Jury Prize to Julia Loktev's The Loneliest Planet "for its bold exploration of societal structures and gender roles, set against a landscape that conveys both profound beauty and profound alienation." And because Gael Garcia Bernal is adorbz. Click through for the rest of prizes and announcements.
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For Mark and Jay Duplass, the sibling team behind The Puffy Chair, Baghead, and last year's Cyrus, success came only after years of frustration -- and only by happy accident. "All we were doing in the late '90s, in our twenties, was trying to be the Coen brothers," Jay Duplass laughed to Movieline, "and failing at that, because the Coen brothers are awesome and they're already the Coen brothers." It was only when the brothers Duplass stopped trying so hard, at the end of their creative rope and after years of fruitless attempts, that they found the formula for personal filmmaking that would become their signature.
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AFI Fest's "secret" screening of Steven Soderbergh's Haywire wasn't so much a showcase for the AFI darling as it was a coming out party for MMA bruiser-cum-action heroine Gina Carano, whom Soderbergh glimpsed fighting one night on TV and subsequently built a star-studded spy thriller pic around. But it's hard to say if first-time actor Carano will branch out in a film career beyond the often lo-fi action experiment. Is she a hybrid of Angelina Jolie and Steven Seagal, as Soderbergh suggested Sunday night? Or is there more of a Cynthia Rothrock quality to Carano's steely gaze and powerhouse physicality?
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Friday night at the 2011 AFI Fest, the seats in the historic Grauman's Chinese Theatre weren't quite filled to capacity for the gala screening of Luc Besson's The Lady, which received mildly lukewarm reviews on the festival circuit. But, as it did at its premiere in Toronto, the biopic of Burmese democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi received a standing ovation at AFI Fest -- one clearly directed primarily at star and Oscar hopeful Michelle Yeoh.
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