In 2019, while filming a project along the US-Mexico border in Texas, directors Sam Osborn and Alejandra Vasquez came across one of the first fully sanctioned University Interscholastic League State Mariachi Festivals, where high school mariachi bands perform at the same competitive level as students in cheer, football, and marching band. The duo was surprised…

The in-person return of Sundance sparked joyous reunions on the ground in Utah this week, but it’s not all celebrations. The industry confronted a troubling milestone on Sunday in Park City: the 50-year anniversary of the historic Roe v. Wade decision that gave women the constitutional right to an abortion. Last June, the U.S. Supreme…

Jennifer Connelly starred in one of the biggest movies of 2022, “Top Gun: Maverick,” as badass bar owner Penelope Benjamin, who has a love connection with Tom Cruise’s Maverick. Cruise’s name has been kicked around as a potential dark horse best actor Oscar nominee, and Connelly told Variety that the nod would be well-deserved due…

Vivica Fox knows “Kill Bill” fans are ready for “Vol. 3.” “People are hungry,” she said at the Variety Studio presented by Audible at Sundance. “Quentin [Tarantino], let’s go!” Fox portrayed Vernita Green in Tarantino’s 2003 martial arts revenge drama “Kill Bill Vol. 1” and the 2004 sequel “Vol. 2,” opposite Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu. The first…

Filmmaker Alison O’Daniel appears in the Next section of the Sundance Film Festival with “The Tuba Thieves,” an innovative feature commentary on deafness. Here, she writes about the agony of closed-captioning at film festivals, and the long-overdue adoption of open captions for all movie theaters worldwide. I am the writer-director of “The Tuba Thieves,” a…

In Thembi Banks’ “Young. Wild. Free.,” a visually confident, shape-shifting yet sometimes wandering coming-of-age tale, nothing comes easy to Los Angeles teen Brandon. Carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders at home and school, he is on the final day of his employment when we first meet him in the back office of…