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Exclusive: Women are front and center in PBS’ slate for its 32nd season of Pov. A total of 16 feature films in this year’s lineup were created by women directors, while four of the five short films are helmed by females. To further diversify its season, Pov has a global reach with 10 of the feature films coming from abroad.

The new season kicks off June 17 with Nancy Schwartzman’s Roll Red Roll on all PBS stations and across its platforms and pov.org and amdoc.org. October will welcome broadcast premieres with pop-out episodes in early 2020. The second season of Pov Shorts will begin July 22 with Changing Same, which will premiere after the feature On Her Shoulders. In addition to Changing Same, the rest of this year’s Pov Shorts confirmed slate feature filmmakers of color: Water Warriors, Stay Close, Edgecombe and Crisanto Street.

The surge of women filmmakers and...

Updated with more info: Focus Features bowed Everybody Knows laid claim to the highest per-screen average of the weekend at the specialty box office. The Cannes-opening film directed by Oscar-winning Iranian helmer Asghar Farhadi and starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem bowed in four locations, grossing $75,000 for an $18,743 average.

The frame’s biggest opening-weekend grosser was the 2019 Oscar Nominated Shorts, this year’s pack of Oscar-nominated short films — in Animated, Live Action and Documentary shorts — in 265 theaters via ShortsTV and Magnolia Pictures. Its widest first-weekend reach ever (67 more screens than last year) resulted in its highest-grossing opening weekend ever: a $912K total, good for a $3,442 per-screen average and possibly on its way to a $1 million total by the end of its run.

“Every year, the Oscar Nominated Shorts opens in the dead of winter, when there’s a dearth of new independent releases and compelling studio options,” Magnolia said Sunday.

Iranian-born director Asghar Farhadi is among an exclusive group of filmmakers to win the Best Foreign Language Oscar twice. For his latest film, Everybody Knows, he’s cast Spanish-born Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, with Focus Features opening the largely Spanish-language film stateside this weekend to begin a slow roll out.

Also among the weekend’s new Specialty lineup is Kino Lorber documentary The Gospel of Eureka by Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri, centering on the inhabitants of a queer and Christian friendly town in the Arkansas Ozarks. The Orchard is opening Under The Eiffel Tower with Matt Walsh, Judith Godrèche, Reid Scott, and Good Deed Entertainment is opening To Dust, starring Géza Röhrig and Matthew Broderick.

Nestled in the Ozarks of northwest Arkansas is a town called Eureka Springs that those of you living outside the south might never have heard of. A popular regional tourist destination just south of the Missouri border, the purposefully quaint little town in recent years has also staked out an unexpected position as a defiantly pro-lgbt community. In 2014 it became the first city in the state to issue same sex marriage licenses and in 2015 it passed a non discrimination ordinance protecting Lgbt visitors and residents.

It’s home to popular drag bars where performers sing gospel songs and patrons with crosses around their necks guzzle booze, alongside honeymooners of all stripes and tourists from surrounding states. And “The Gospel of Eureka,” a new documentary directed by Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri, takes audiences to this small section of the country to examine its homegrown politics and allure.

Of course we...

As long as there have been queer people, there has been queer community. We flocked to coastal cities like New York and San Francisco, and when we could not do that, we gravitated toward each other in more conservative regions, making Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and Minneapolis into unexpected queer meccas. But not everyone has the financial freedom to leave it all behind and get the hell out of Dodge, and some people wouldn’t want to even if they could. As the tides of progress move swiftly forward, even the most conservative institutions are becoming more accepting. At this year’s SXSW Film Festival, two new documentaries, “TransMilitary” and “The Gospel of Eureka,” uncover Lgbtq triumphs in two places you’d least expect: organized religion and the military.

Directed by Gabriel Silverman and Fiona Dawson, “TransMilitary” charts the fight for transgender individuals to serve openly in the U.S.

Juried prizes were presented tonight at the 25th annual Swsw Film Festival. Jim Gaffigan, in Austin to represent the Miranda Bailey-directed ensemble comedy “You Can Choose Your Family,” presided as host. The venue was the Paramount Theatre, a 103-year-old landmark just blocks from the Texas Capitol.

SXSW will continue screening films through Saturday, when most of the festival’s audience awards recipients will be announced. The exception is for the headlining films, such as “A Quiet Place,” “Blockers,” and “Ready Player One” — those verdicts follows on March 19.

This year’s line-up comprised 256 total features and shorts, culled from 8,183 submissions. Best narrative feature “Thunder Road” was adapted from the namesake, one-take short that won a Grand Jury award at Sundance in 2016.

Lena Dunham’s “Tiny Furniture” (2010) and Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Short Term 12” (2013) are among the best-known past jury victors at SXSW. IndieWire’s Dana Harris helped choose the Louis Black “Lone Star” honoree,...