Biographical films perform better when the lead disappears into the real figure. This could be via a mix of voice, ...

I gathered over 500 reported standing ovations across five of the world’s biggest film festivals to see whether the length of applause tells us anything meaningful about a film’s future.

I studied the data behind 10,524 films and more than four million audience reviews to see whether conversations about ...

Last week in an article about how long your film needs to be to be accepted into film festivals, I mentioned in passing that a 90-second short film was eligible at nine out of ten film festivals I ...

This is the first of a multi-part research project that I’ve been working on for some time. I have been collecting public data on the backgrounds of top film directors to investigate things like class ...

Colour is one of the quickest ways a poster can tell you what kind of film it’s selling. Before you’ve read the title or registered the actors, your brain has already clocked the palette and filed it ...

Very few movies don’t contain some kind of moral message designed to show us a better path, a better way of living, or to teach us how to be better people. In some cases it’s because the filmmakers ...

This is final part of my collaboration with Screendollars in which we spoke to 246 cinema owners and exhibition-affiliated film professionals. We quizzed them on a range of topics, and their answers ...

This is part two of my collaboration with Screendollars in which we spoke to 246 cinema owners and film professionals affiliated with exhibitors. We quizzed them on a range of topics, and their ...

An oft-repeated mantra among film distribution professionals is “Drama is not a genre”. By that, they don’t mean that films cannot be dramatic, nor that there are not films you could call “a drama”.

Cannes 2025 was not a washout. The Croisette was crowded, the sun came out, and over 15,000 industry professionals turned up. But something has shifted. I believe that we will look back at 2025 as an ...