Will Smith apologizes for The Slap once again, but this time to Chris Rock; celebrity slap reactions debunked; women in El Salvador are paying the price for the country’s draconian abortion ban. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.
But First: If you love documentaries as much as I do — and especially if you love free, high-quality documentaries that you can watch in their entirety on YouTube with no ad breaks — then you should check out Indebted to All Women (En Deuda con Todas) directed by María Lobo and Roi Guitián. It offers a sobering look into El Salvador’s draconian abortion ban and the legion of impoverished women who end up behind bars simply for suffering miscarriages and stillbirths. The heart-wrenching doc just won the Leslie J. Sacks Best Documentary Feature prize at the Women’s Voices Now film festival.
Atlanta Film Festival: Has announced its lineup for its 46th annual fest, taking place from April 21 – May 1 in Atlanta, Georgia. The lineup includes Cooper Raiff’s Cha Cha Real Smooth, John Patton Ford’s Emily the Criminal, and Summering, a coming-of-age story directed by Georgia-native and ATLFF alumni James Ponsoldt. The opening film will be Abi Damaris Corbin’s 892 and the closing film will be Isabel Castro’s Mija. The full schedule of events will be available on April 1 at atlantafilmfestival.com.
Emerging Voices: New Orleans Film Society has chosen 10 Louisiana-based filmmakers to take part in the 2022 Emerging Voices Directors Labs. The program offers a chance for underrepresented filmmakers — geographically, racially, and ethnically — to expand their networks get feedback on their projects in development.
Will Smith’s Apology: Will Smith posted on Instagram apologizing once again for The Slap. This time, he aimed his apology directly at Chris Rock, who was not included in his original apology during his Oscars acceptance speech for Best Actor on Sunday. “Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally,” he wrote. “I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness.”
A Look Behind the Curtain: Variety interviewed Rob Mills, the head of unscripted at ABC and Walt Disney Television, about what exactly was going on in the Oscars production trailer while Smith and Rock had their moment. Mills was there when the Oscars producers and director Glenn Weiss realized, wait a second… this is actually happening.
It Became Clear: That things were really serious when Rock broke the rules of the broadcast by uttering a swear word with his “Will Smith slapped the shit out of me” reaction to being, well, slapped. “That’s when it became obvious that this was not a joke,” Mills said. He also gave insights into why the broadcast was muted for a brief period after that, why the show still went over the 3-hour mark, and which speeches he thinks you should go back and watch to fully appreciate how wonderful they were without being overshadowed by, y’know, The Slap.
Here’s What’s Not Real: Most of the tweets and memes going around about celebrity reactions to The Slap, especially this one of Nicole Kidman looking completely shocked. Big thanks to Vulture, who revealed that the photo of Kidman was actually taken about 26 minutes before the Oscars broadcast even began. The New York Magazine branch reached out to the photographer who took the photo and discovered that Kidman was actually reacting to Jessica Chastain walking into the room.
Don’t Be Fooled: By other celeb-reaction compilations, like this one that’s been going around, which is clearly just a bunch of random photos of celebrities making surprised faces at different events over the last several years (we’ve all seen that Meryl Streep face before). The only other reaction image I know to be real is this one of Lupita Nyong’o, because Will Smith is right there in the picture making the face one makes right before they storm the Oscars stage. However, if we’re being really precise, that one isn’t technically a slap reaction either — it was Nyong’o reacting to Rock’s original G.I. Jane joke at the expense of Jada Pinkett Smith, which Nyong’o could probably already tell was not going to end well for anyone.
Now Streaming: Writing with Fire may have lost the best documentary feature category to Questlove’s Summer of Soul, but it’s still a great watch. Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas’ film is all about Khabar Lahariya, the all-women-led newsroom that reports on marginalized communities and media-dark villages in India. Writing with Fire made its television premiere Monday night on PBS’ Independent Lens and is now streaming on the PBS video app.
Congrats: To all the winners of the Oxford Film Festival in Mississippi, including Anna Baumgarten’s Disfluency, which won best narrative feature; Brandon Kramer’s The First Step, which won best documentary feature; and Ashley E. Gibson’s The Fearless 11, which won best Mississippi feature.
I’ll Leave You With This: The full hour-long documentary, Indebted to All Women (En Deuda con Todas). Pro-tip — non-Spanish speakers can hit the CC button for very accurate subtitles.
Main image: A still from Indebted to All Women (En Deuda con Todas), courtesy of AGARESO
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