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Sundance Institute selects 12 projects for feature film programme

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MUMBAI: Sundance Institute has selected 12 projects for its 2013 January Screenwriters Lab, an immersive, five-day (11-16 January 2013) writers’ workshop at the Sundance Resort in Utah.

Participating independent screenwriters – drawn from around the world, including the US, Iran, Europe, Mexico, and Somalia – will have the opportunity to work intensely on their feature film scripts with the support of established writers.

The 2013 Lab is dedicated to the memory of Frank Pierson (1925-2012), a founding creative advisor of the Feature Film Programme whose body of work and generosity as a mentor served as an inspiration to countless writers.

Sundance Institute executive director Keri Putnam said, “Across all Sundance Institute Labs, which include offerings for various forms of artistic expression, the constant is creating an environment that encourages innovation and creative risk-taking. We look forward to building a unique community of artists at our Lab, in support of these emerging screenwriters and their stories.”

Sundance Institute Feature Film Programme founding director Michelle Satter said, “We are thrilled to welcome the new group of writers to the Lab whose stories are timely, ambitious and singular in their vision and independent voice. Exploring themes that resonate across cultures, the writers have found diverse and dynamic approaches to storytelling that will inspire and move audiences in the years to come.

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The January Screenwriters Labs marks the beginning of a rigorous year-round process of creative and tactical support which is tailored to the needs of each individual project and extends from script development to connecting with audiences.”

The Fellows will work with a distinguished group of creative advisors at the Lab, including Marcos Bernstein, D.V. DeVincentis, Michael Goldenberg, Susannah Grant, Walter Mosley, Marti Noxon, Anjum Rajabali, Howard Rodman, David Seidler, Susan Shilliday, Zach Sklar, Dana Stevens, Robin Swicord, Mike White, Tyger Williams and Erin Cressida Wilson.

The projects and Fellows selected for the 2013 January Screenwriters Lab are:

700th and International (U.S.A.)
Chinaka Hodge (writer)
A trash-talking hood track phenomenon named Tuka dies by an unexpected bullet; she awakes to find herself in a corrupt version of heaven where everyone has a job—namely, to decide the exact moment of death for someone still living on earth.

Chinaka Hodge is a poet, educator and playwright from Oakland, California. She received her BA from NYU’s Gallatin School and her MFA from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. After nearly a decade of performing her own words around the globe and on two seasons of Def Poetry, she made the transition to the screen and received her first credit for Brave New Voices on HBO.

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The Adderall Diaries (U.S.A.)
Pamela Romanowsky (writer/director)
While covering a real-life murder mystery, writer Stephen Elliott realizes he’d rather investigate his own dysfunctional relationships with women, his father and himself. Based on the memoir by Stephen Elliott.

Born and raised in Minnesota, Pamela Romanowsky moved to New York to attend NYU’s Graduate Film Program. Her short film Gravity premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival and won the National Board of Review and the Wasserman/King Foundation’s student filmmaking awards. Her most recent directorial effort is TAR (James Franco, Mila Kunis, Jessica Chastain, Zach Braff), a multi-director omnibus based on the
life and poetry of CK Williams.

Avalanche (Iran)
Morteza Farshbaf (co-writer/director) and Anahita Ghazvinizadeh (co-writer)
When a nurse takes the graveyard shift, a period of sleeplessness and solitude leaves her with a new perspective on her life.

Morteza Farshbaf is an Iranian writer and filmmaker. He studied cinema at the Tehran University of Art, during which time he was a student of and assistant for Abbas Kiarostami. After making several short films, Farshbaf’s first feature Mourning won the New Currents Award and FIPRESCI Prize at the 2011 Busan International Film Festival.

Anahita Ghazvinizadeh is an Iranian writer and filmmaker. She studied cinema in Tehran and is continuing her education in film in the United States. She was also a student of Kiarostami, and has made short films in Iran and the US. She has collaborated with Farshbaf on several projects, including as a co-writer of Mourning.

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Franny (U.S.A.)
Andrew Renzi (writer/director)
When the daughter and new husband of late family friends move back to Philadelphia, a larger-than-life but damaged man cannot control his desire to recreate the past. Andrew F.

Renzi wrote and directed the short film The Fort, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. His newest short film, Karaoke!, will premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Previously, Renzi worked with the New York production company Borderline Films on Antonio Campos’ Afterschool (Cannes 2008) and Alistair Banks Griffin’s Two Gates of Sleep (Cannes 2010).

The Incident (U.S.A)
Jan Kwiecinski (writer/director)
When a young man decides to cover up an accidental murder, his whole life comes into focus in ways he never expected. Jan Kwiecinski graduated from the filmmaking departments of the London Film School and the Wajda’s Master School of Directing. His award-winning short film, The Incident, screened internationally at many festivals including the Shanghai International Film Festival and the T-Mobile New Horizons Film Festival. Recently, Kwiecinski directed the segment entitled Fawns of the omnibus feature The Fourth Dimension, co-directed by Alexey Fedorchenko and Harmony Korine. The film premiered in the Narrative Competition at the 2012 San Francisco Film Festival.

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (U.K. / Germany / U.S.A.)
Eva Weber (co-writer/director) and Vendela Vida (co-writer)
Twenty-eight-year-old Clarissa discovers on the day of her father’s funeral that everything she believed about her life was a lie. She flees New York and travels to the Arctic Circle to uncover the secrets of her mother who mysteriously vanished when Clarissa was fourteen.

Originally from Germany, Eva Weber is a London-based filmmaker working in both documentary and fiction. Her award-winning films have screened at numerous international film festivals, including Sundance, Edinburgh, SXSW, BFI London, and Telluride; and have also been broadcast on UK and international television. Her documentary short film The Solitary Life of Cranes was selected as one of the top five films of the year by critic Nick Bradshaw in Sight & Sound’s annual film review in 2008.

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Vendela Vida is the author of four books, including the novels Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers. She is a founding co-editor of the Believer magazine and co-writer of the film Away We Go, which was directed by Sam Mendes.

Love After Love (U.S.A.)

Russell Harbaugh (writer/director)
Taking place over the course of several years, Love After Love is a messy, autobiographical love story about grief, sex and the separation of a family.

Russell Harbaugh’s short film Rolling on the Floor Laughing played the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and many other festivals around the world including the FSLC/MoMA co-curated New Directors/New Films, Maryland Film Festival, Sarasota International Film Festival, Milano, Warsaw, and others. Previously, Harbaugh was the assistant to Eric Mendelsohn on the film 3 Backyards, which earned the Best Director award at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Harbaugh received his MFA from Columbia University in 2011 and is originally from Evansville, Indiana. He lives in New York.

Maanokoobiyo (Somalia/U.S.A.)
K’naan (writer/director)
In war-torn Somalia, an artistic orphan named Maano joins the mercenary killing squad of a notorious warlord, only to discover his adoptive father and gang leader is responsible for wiping out his family.

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K’naan is a Somali poet, rapper and singer, songwriter. He spent his childhood in Mogadishu, Somalia and was on one of the last commercial flights out of the country before its collapse. He rose to prominence with the success of his song “Wavin’ Flag” after it was chosen as the anthem of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. He lives in New York.

Mercy Road (U.S.A.)
Ian Hendrie (co-writer/co-director) and Jyson McLean (co-writer/co-director)
Based on true events, Mercy Road traces the political and spiritual odyssey of a small town housewife as she turns from peaceful pro-life activist to underground militant willing to commit violence and murder in the name of God.

Ian Hendrie is a San Francisco-based director, screenwriter, producer. He is also the co-founder of Fantoma Films, a production company and independent DVD label which has been releasing premium edition DVDs of films by such famed auteurs as Francis Ford Coppola, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Samuel Fuller, Fritz Lang, Kenneth Anger and Alex Cox, among others, since 1999. Along with Jyson McLean, Hendrie was the recipient of the Fall 2011 San Francisco Film Society/Kenneth Rainin Foundation Grant for Screenwriting for Mercy Road.

Jyson McLean began making short films in high school. He attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and shortly thereafter began directing commercials and music videos, which have aired nationally and overseas. His commercial credits include spots for Bud Light, Career Builder and Quaker Oats. He has won the Gold ITVA PEER award three years in a row, and has worked with numerous award-winning advertising agencies including DDB Los Angeles, BBDO London and Fred & Farid, Paris.

State Like Sleep (U.S.A.)
Meredith Danluck (writer/director)
Under the surreal cloud cover of northern Europe, a young American widow reluctantly revisits her past when her mother is hospitalized in Brussels. While coping with the bleak reality of parental loss, Katherine explores her deceased husband’s secret life of underground sex clubs and finds comfort in a relationship with a stranger as equally broken as she is.

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Meredith Danluck is an artist and filmmaker. Her work has screened at major art institutions internationally including MoMA, PS1, Venice Biennale, Liverpool Biennial, and Reina Sofia, as well as various film festivals including SXSW, TIFF, Doc NYC, Margaret Mead and Hamburg International. This year, as part of the New Frontier exhibition at the Sundance Film Festival, she will be showing her four-screen film installation North of South, West of East.

Zeus (Mexico)
Miguel Calderón (writer/director)
Sporadically employed and still living with his mother, Joel finds his only joy in falconry in the flatlands outside Mexico City, until an encounter with a down-to-earth secretary forces him to face reality. Miguel Calderón is a visual artist working in various mediums, notably photography, video and writing. His exhibitions have been included at the Sao Paolo Biennial, Museo Tamayo, Yokohama Triennial, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and Jumex Collection. He lives in Mexico City.

Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship Given to a project that explores science and technology themes and characters.

Prodigal Summer (U.S.A.)

Nicole Kassell (co-writer/director) and Barbara Kingsolver (co-writer)
Prodigal Summer, based on the best selling novel by Barbara Kingsolver, weaves together three utterly unexpected love stories through the course of one summer in southern Appalachia. In this extravagant ode to the natural orders of biology and the human spirit, the forces of life, death and procreation connect every life that inhabits the lush landscape.

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Nicole Kassell is an MFA graduate of NYU’s Film Program. Her first feature, The Woodsman, premiered in competition at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and went on to receive numerous accolades including nominations for the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Director and Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards. Kassell has continued to write and direct film and episodic television. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of 14 books of fiction and nonfiction including the current bestseller Flight Behavior. Translated into more than 20 languages, her books have earned a devoted readership and numerous awards including the National Humanities Medal. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.

The Sundance Institute Feature Film Program 2013 January Screenwriters Lab is made possible by generous support from The Annenberg Foundation, Cinereach, Mumbai Mantra Media, LTD., National Endowment for the Arts, the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, B.Co, RT Features, Sheila Johnson, Indian Paintbrush Productions, Time Warner Foundation, NHK Enterprises 21, Inc., SAGIndie, The James Irvine Foundation, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, The Creators Project, a partnership between Intel and VICE, the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Family Fund, Sundial Pictures, LLC, and the Zygmunt & Audrey Wilf Foundation.

Ten films supported by the Feature Film Programme will have their world premieres at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The US Dramatic Competition will feature: ‘Ain’t Them Bodies Saints‘, written and directed by David Lowery; Fruitvale, written and directed by Ryan Coogler; ‘May in the Summer‘, written and directed by Cherien Dabis; ‘Mother of George‘, written by Darci Picoult and directed by Andrew Dosunmu; and ‘Concussion‘, written and directed by Stacie Passon.

The Next section will include: ‘Blue Caprice‘, written and directed by Alexandre Moors; ‘It Felt Like Love‘, written and directed by Eliza Hittman; ‘A Teacher‘, written and directed by Hannah Fidell; and ‘This is Martin Bonner‘, written and directed by Chad Hartigan. In addition, Rama Burshtein’s ‘Fill the Void‘ will screen in the Festival’s Spotlight section, and the New Frontier exhibition will include the E.m-bed.de/d, Datamosh, Augmented Real installation, which artist Yung Jake developed in part at the New Frontier Story Lab.

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International

Why knowing more languages protects actors from the threat of AI

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LOS ANGELES: Acting has never been an easy profession, but in recent years, it has acquired a new existential anxiety. Artificial intelligence can now mimic faces, clone voices and, in theory at least, speak any language it is fed. The fear that actors may soon be replaced by algorithms no longer belongs exclusively to science fiction. And yet, despite the rise of digital inauthenticity, some performers remain stubbornly resistant to replacement. The reason is not celebrity, nor even talent. It is language.

On paper, this should not be a problem. AI can translate. It can imitate accents. It can string together grammatically correct sentences in dozens of languages. But acting, inconveniently, is not about grammatical correctness. It is about meaning, and meaning is where AI still falters.

Machine translation offers a cautionary tale. Google Translate, now powered by neural AI, has improved markedly since its debut in 2006. It can manage menus, emails and airport signage with impressive efficiency. What it struggles with, however, are the moments that matter most: idioms, metaphors, irony, and cultural shorthand. Ask it to translate a joke, a threat disguised as politeness, or a line heavy with emotional subtext, and it begins to unravel. Acting lives precisely in those gaps.

This matters because film language is rarely literal. Scripts, particularly in independent cinema, rely on figurative speech and symbolism to convey what characters cannot say outright. Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver is a useful example. The film’s recurring use of red operates on multiple levels: grief, desire, repression, liberation, and memory. These meanings are inseparable from the Spanish cultural context and emotional cadence. A translation may convey the words, but not the weight they carry. An AI-generated performance might replicate the sound, but not the sense.

This is where multilingual actors gain their edge. Performers such as Penélope Cruz and Sofía Vergara do not simply switch between languages; they move between cultural logics. Their fluency allows them to inhabit characters without flattening them for international consumption. Language, for them, is not an accessory but a structuring force.

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Beyond European cinema, this becomes even more pronounced. Languages such as Hindi, Arabic and Mandarin are spoken by hundreds of millions of people and underpin vast cinematic traditions. As global audiences grow more interconnected, the demand for authenticity increases rather than diminishes. Viewers can tell when a performance has been filtered through approximation. Subtle errors, misplaced emphasis, and an unnatural rhythm break the illusion.

There is also a practical dimension. Multilingualism expands opportunity. Sofía Vergara has spoken openly about how learning English enabled her to work beyond Colombia and access Hollywood roles. But this movement is not a one-way export of talent into English-speaking cinema. Multilingual actors carry stories, styles and sensibilities back with them, enriching multiple industries at once.

Cinema has always thrived on such hybridity. Denzel Washington’s performances, for instance, draw on the cultural realities of growing up African American in the United States, while also reflecting stylistic influences from classic Hollywood and Westerns. His work demonstrates how identity and influence intersect on screen. Multilingual actors extend this intersection further, embodying multiple cultural frameworks simultaneously.

At times, linguistic authenticity is not merely artistic but ethical. Films that confront historical trauma, such as Schindler’s List, rely on language to anchor their moral seriousness. When Jewish actors perform in German, the choice is not incidental. Language becomes a site of memory and confrontation. It is difficult to imagine an automated voice carrying that responsibility without hollowing it out.

This is why claims that AI heralds the death of language miss the point. Language is not just a delivery system for information. It is a repository of history, humour, power and pain. Fluency is not only about knowing what to say, but when to hesitate, when to understate, and when to let silence do the work. These are not technical problems waiting to be solved; they are human instincts shaped by lived experience.

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AI may one day improve its grasp of metaphor and nuance. It may even learn to sound convincing. But acting is not about sounding convincing; it is about being convincing. Until algorithms can acquire memory, cultural inheritance and emotional intuition, multilingual actors will remain irreplaceable. AI may learn to speak. But it cannot yet learn to mean.

In an industry increasingly tempted by shortcuts, language remains stubbornly resistant to automation. And for actors who can move between worlds, linguistic, cultural, and emotional, that resistance is not a weakness, but a quiet, enduring advantage.

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Ten books that deserve to be adapted into films in 2026

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MUMBAI: As 2026 kicks off, cultural authority feels increasingly dispersed. First-time novelists sit alongside literary mainstays, while actors, influencers, and playwrights all compete for cinematic attention. In this environment, the old question resurfaces with urgency: why do some books translate so effectively to film, while others are dismissed as unadaptable?

We already know the canonical successes. Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Normal People. But as attention spans shorten and viewing habits fragment, can interior, structurally difficult novels still hold an audience? And should cinema even try?

The following books suggest that it should.

1. Flesh by David Szalay

Szalay’s novel follows a male protagonist drifting through sex, work, and power with an emotional blankness that becomes its own diagnosis. The book is an anatomy of masculine passivity, entitlement, and quiet self-destruction.

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Seen against the rise of online masculinity discourse and figures emerging from the so-called manosphere, Flesh offers a far more unsettling portrait. It neither redeems nor condemns its subject. A film adaptation would succeed only if it preserved this moral discomfort, forcing viewers to sit inside a masculinity that does not announce itself as a problem.

Adaptation status: no announced screen adaptation.

2. I Want to Die, but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee

First published in 2018, this book documents therapy sessions addressing depression, medication, and stigma in South Korea. Baek Se-hee has unfortunately passed away, yet the book’s popularity has endured.

Its appeal lies in its ordinariness. There is no narrative breakthrough, only repetition and honesty. A restrained film adaptation could offer a rare depiction of mental health that avoids both melodrama and uplift, while also opening a culturally specific conversation rarely shown on screen.

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Adaptation status: no confirmed adaptation.

3. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Despite the current enthusiasm for romantic adaptations, this novel has yet to be adapted for the screen. Told largely through monitored workplace emails, it follows an IT employee who falls in love with someone he has never met.

It is a romance shaped by surveillance, distance, and ethical unease. In an era of digital intimacy and algorithmic proximity, this would make a sharp, contemporary romantic film that understands how affection now develops indirectly.

Adaptation status: previously optioned, not produced.

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4. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

This short story collection is built on silence, miscommunication, and emotional failure. Its minimalism is cinematic rather than literary, relying on what is withheld rather than explained.

A film adaptation in vignette form could capture this accumulation of small disappointments. It would resist plot in favour of mood and implication, demanding patience rather than rewarding it.

Adaptation status: individual stories adapted; no definitive feature adaptation of the collection.

5. The Fraud by Zadie Smith

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Published in 2023, this is Zadie Smith’s first historical novel. Set around the Victorian Tichborne Trial, it examines race, class, authorship, and credibility in a society obsessed with legitimacy.

Though intellectually dense, it has a strong narrative frame and vivid historical texture. A film adaptation could streamline its arguments while preserving its central concern: who gets believed, and why.

Adaptation status: no announced adaptation.

6. Roaming by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

This graphic novel follows three university friends as they drift through New York, capturing the emotional slackening that defines early adulthood.

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Its visual language and episodic structure already resemble cinema. A film adaptation could thrive as a quiet coming-of-age story focused on atmosphere rather than transformation.

Adaptation status: no announced adaptation.

7. The Years by Annie Ernaux

Ernaux’s collective autobiography rejects traditional narrative, moving instead through memory, photographs, and shared cultural experience.

A recent stage adaptation showed that the book can survive translation across forms. A film version would need to embrace fragmentation and essayistic techniques, but the result could be formally daring and emotionally precise.

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Adaptation status: stage adaptations exist; no major film announced.

8. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

This polyphonic novel traces the interconnected lives of Black British women across generations. Its modular structure suits screen adaptation, particularly ensemble formats.

While television may be the natural home, a carefully constructed film could foreground its thematic coherence without flattening difference.

Adaptation status: a screen adaptation has been announced and is in development.

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9. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

Published in 2024, this memoir explores Roy’s relationship with her mother, politics, faith, and personal history. It is intimate, uncompromising, and formally loose.

A film adaptation would need to avoid biopic conventions in favour of reflection and contradiction. It would appeal to audiences comfortable with ambiguity rather than narrative closure.

Adaptation status: no announced adaptation.

10. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

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Orwell’s account of poverty and precarious labour remains unsettlingly current. Its depiction of invisible work and social indifference resonates strongly in an age of gig economies and housing insecurity.

A modern adaptation could retain its period setting while making its relevance unmistakable. Darkly comic and ethically sharp, it is overdue for a serious cinematic reimagining.

Adaptation status: adapted previously; no recent major adaptation announced.

Books that adapt well are not necessarily plot-driven but structurally honest. They trust audiences to tolerate discomfort, ambiguity, and silence. If cinema is serious about reflecting contemporary life, fractured, anxious, plural, these are exactly the stories it should be brave enough to attempt.

* Note: These books are not in any particular order

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Cinema meets live broadcast as ARRI taps The HELM for global rollout

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MUNICH: When cinema’s gold standard collides with live television’s breakneck pace, something’s got to give. ARRI, the century-old German camera maker beloved by Hollywood directors, is betting it doesn’t have to be image quality.

The company has named The HELM, a Sydney-based live production specialist, as its first global live solution partner—a move that formalises years of collaboration and signals ARRI’s serious push into real-time broadcasting.

The partnership puts ARRI’s Alexa 35 Live multicam system, which marries the firm’s celebrated colour science with live workflow demands, into productions worldwide as a managed service.

For The HELM, founded just two years ago but staffed by veterans with 80 years of combined experience, the deal is both validation and accelerant. The outfit has already deployed Alexa 35 Live cameras across high-profile gigs: Canelo Álvarez’s pay-per-view boxing bout in Riyadh, the TikTok Creator Awards broadcast, Troye Sivan’s concert tour, and various corporate affairs.

Now it becomes ARRI’s go-to integrator for anyone wanting cinematic visuals without the usual headaches of wrangling film-grade kit into live environments.
“We’re empowering broadcast and event producers to deliver the unmistakable ARRI look in real time,” says Chris Richter, managing director at ARRI.

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Translation: no more choosing between the lush imagery of cinema and the unforgiving demands of live television.

Co-founder and chief executive of The HELM, Josh Moffat, calls it “the natural evolution” of a relationship built on countless productions. The firms will now collaborate on marketing, technical development, training and pilot projects—essentially turning The HELM into ARRI’s live production laboratory.

The logic is straightforward. ARRI’s cameras have collected 20 scientific and technical awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but live broadcasting is a different beast: tighter deadlines, zero room for error, crews that need plug-and-play solutions. By handing integration to The HELM, ARRI lowers the barrier to entry whilst offloading operational risk.

The arrangement also gives productions a single point of contact for global solutions, from concert touring to major sporting broadcasts. Think of it as cinema-quality-as-a-service, with The HELM doing the heavy lifting on connectivity, technical design and operational delivery across continents.

For an industry perpetually chasing sharper pictures and faster turnarounds, it’s a marriage of convenience that could reshape live production. Hollywood looks are going live. And going global.

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