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Documentary About Musician Alex Sparrow’s Recovery From Stroke Screens at DOC NYC

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A musician on the verge of stardom has a head-on car crash that leaves him paralyzed and unable to sing. Then he fights his way back.

WILL POWER, a new documentary from director Lauro Rocha, follows the true story of Alex Sparrow (Aleksey Vorobyov), an actor and musician who suffered a traumatic brain injury and stroke after a 2013 car accident in Los Angeles. The film screens at DOC NYC on November 15 at Village East by Angelika.

Sparrow was 17 when he broke out on the Russian version of The X Factor. He signed with Universal Music Russia in 2006 and represented Russia at the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest. By 2013, he’d moved to the U.S. and was working with Grammy-winning producer RedOne, known for Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.

Then came the crash. Doctors said he might never sing, act, or dance again. Filmed over several years, WILL POWER documents Sparrow’s recovery as he relearns basic skills and eventually returns to performing.

“My progress wasn’t linear, and reclaiming my life meant discovering a new version of myself,” Sparrow says.

The documentary has won awards at the Overcome Film Festival and Eurasia Film Festival. Rocha, a graduate of the AFI Conservatory and founder of Small World Films, says the film challenges assumptions about resilience and human limits.

Tickets are $20 to $22.

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Japanese Horror Film “New Group” Hits Shudder with Body Horror and Social Commentary

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A high school student watches her world spiral into terror as those around her turn into mindless followers in “New Group,” a Japanese body horror film that lands on Shudder November 6.

Director Yûta Shimotsu transforms simple gymnastics routines into what critics call “a nightmarish dance of death.” The film stars Anna Yamada as Ai, who witnesses a cult-like mentality spread through her community.

Shimotsu, who studied mechanical engineering before moving into filmmaking, made his feature debut with “Best Wishes to All” in 2023. “New Group” screened at Fantasia International Film Festival and Sitges Film Festival before its streaming release.

Early reviews highlight the film’s blend of horror and social criticism. Rue Morgue calls it “a most entertaining slice of weirdness…braced by an underpinning of social commentary.” Bloody Disgusting labels it “an incredible, unpredictable body horror masterpiece that doubles as an indicting satire of Japan’s society.”

The 82-minute film, written by Shimotsu and Momoko Sahara, also stars Yuzu Aoki and Pierre Taki. It joins Shudder’s growing library of international horror that uses genre filmmaking to examine cultural anxieties.

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Colombia’s Oscar Entry “Rains Over Babel” Sets New York Premiere and LA Screening

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A queer tropical-punk twist on Dante’s Inferno is heading to New York and Los Angeles.

Rains Over Babel, Colombia’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards, will have its New York premiere at Museum of the Moving Image on December 5. The film screens in Los Angeles on November 5 at Instituto Cervantes.

Writer-director Gala del Sol’s debut feature premiered at Sundance and became the highest-grossing Colombian film of 2026 during a 14-week theatrical run. It also made history as the first Colombian feature invited to screen at Pixar Animation Studios.

Set in a retro-futuristic version of Cali, Colombia, the film follows misfits who gather at Babel, a dive bar that doubles as purgatory. La Flaca (Saray Rebolledo) presides over lost souls gambling years of their lives to outwit Death. Over one night, their stories collide. Dante searches for his forgotten past, the ghost Monet races to reclaim his body, Timbí and Uma descend through purgatory to save loved ones, and Jacob prepares for his debut drag performance.

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Italian Horror Film The Holy Boy Hits Shudder After Fantastic Fest Wins

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A tormented teacher discovers a dark secret in a too-happy Italian village in The Holy Boy, Paolo Strippoli’s new folk horror film coming to Shudder on November 27th.

The film follows Sergio, a teacher transferred to Remis, a secluded town known as the happiest place in Italy. He finds out why. Every week, villagers gather to hug Matteo, a 15-year-old whose embrace can supposedly erase pain and sorrow. When Sergio realizes the town’s devotion to the boy isn’t as benevolent as it looks, his attempt to rescue him backfires hard.

The Holy Boy won the Audience Award and New Wave Best Director at Fantastic Fest and played the Venice Film Festival and BFI London. Variety called it “a clever, creepy Italian chiller” that uses horror to investigate “the dangers of displaced grief.” Dread Central said Strippoli’s film “reaches straight through the chest to grab hold of your heart and squeeze it dry.”

Strippoli previously directed A Classic Horror Story for Netflix and won Best Director at Taormina Film Fest for it. He’s got another horror film, The Spiral, coming later this year.

The Holy Boy stars Michele Riondino and Giulio Feltri. It’s written by Strippoli, Jacopo Del Giudice, and Milo Tissone.

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Jet2 Partners with Adobe to Build AI-Powered Holiday Planning Tools

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ADOBE-JET-2UK tour operator Jet2 is teaming up with Adobe to bring personalized AI features to its 10 million customers.

The multi-year partnership centers on Adobe CX Enterprise Coworker, which uses AI to help Jet2 staff deliver customized travel recommendations at scale. The system will suggest destinations based on each customer’s booking history and preferences, from family resorts to city breaks, and create daily itineraries for travelers already on vacation.

Jet2 will also use Adobe’s content tools to produce on-brand material faster. Adobe Firefly Foundry lets the company build custom AI models trained on its own assets, while Adobe Brand Intelligence keeps outputs consistent across platforms.

A new joint Customer Experience Lab will bring Adobe engineers and Jet2’s digital teams together to test and build new AI services, like smarter ways to match travelers with trips that fit their style.

“Customers know they will always receive a VIP experience when they holiday with us,” said David Hills, Jet2’s chief customer officer. “Working with Adobe will enable us to serve our customers even better, using the power of AI to make every interaction more personal, more relevant, more timely and always helpful.”

Jet2 is the UK’s largest tour operator and third largest airline, flying from 14 UK airports.

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Sundance Award-Winner Soul Patrol Opens in Theaters with Hidden Story of Vietnam’s First Black Special Ops Team

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A documentary uncovering one of the Vietnam War’s most overlooked stories is coming to theaters. Soul Patrol, which won the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary at Sundance, follows the first all-Black special operations team to operate behind enemy lines.

Director J.M. Harper sat down with the surviving members of this elite unit, who reunite in a hotel room 50 years after the war. Using raw Super 8 footage, photographs, and audio recordings from their personal archives, the film reconstructs their mission with an intimacy rarely seen in war documentaries.

The setting becomes surreal as the men grapple with memory, brotherhood, and unresolved trauma. At the core is a painful contradiction: fighting for freedom abroad while facing inequality at home.

Harper adapted the film from Ed Emanuel’s memoir. The project was produced by Sam Bisbee, Harper, Danielle Massie, Peter Bittenbender, and Nasir Jones.

Critics are calling it essential. The Hollywood Reporter praised it as “jolting and heartbreaking,” while Variety noted its contribution to understanding both the Vietnam War and Black history.

Soul Patrol opens November 6 at IFC Center in New York, then expands November 13 to LA and nationwide through Kino Lorber. For indie filmmakers tackling buried history, this is a master class in reconstruction and access.

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IMDb Adds Michif as Official Language, a First for Métis Cinema

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IMDb just made history for Indigenous filmmakers. The platform officially added Michif to its list of recognized title languages, giving the Métis language the same structural standing as English or French.

The update comes after years of advocacy led by Métis filmmaker Jordan Waunch, whose anti-western series Shadow of the Rougarou is now the first production credited with Michif as an official title language on the site. Set during the 1885 North-West Resistance, the series features dialogue in Michif, Cree, and Chinook Wawa, weaving a dark story of survival rooted in oral tradition.

“For a long time, Michif has been absent from the systems that catalogue and classify screen work,” Waunch says. “Seeing it recognized on IMDb gives our language a visible place in the global record of cinema.”

He credits the milestone to Elders and Language Keepers including Stella Erasmus Johnson, Bruce Dumont, Don Campbell, Theodore Starr, Lisa Shepherd, Douglas Robertson, and Ray G. Thunderchild.

But the work isn’t done. Waunch says the next step is getting IMDb to recognize distinct Michif dialects and other Indigenous languages still left off the platform.

Shadow of the Rougarou was backed by the Indigenous Screen Office, Creative BC, the Bell Fund, and APTN. The series streams now on APTN+.

This matters because language preservation starts with visibility, and for indie Indigenous creators, that means showing up in the same databases as every other film.

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Brazilian Broadcast Demo Shows Two Signals Can Share One Frequency

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Researchers just pulled off something that could change how TV broadcasts work. At a symposium in Brazil this summer, a team showed they could decode a weaker broadcast signal while canceling out a much stronger one on the same frequency, in real time.

The demo happened at the IEEE International Symposium in João Pessoa in July. Mackenzie Presbyterian University ran the test using tech from labs in Spain, China, Korea, and Canada. The weaker signal they decoded was 37 decibels below the stronger one, a huge power gap.

Why does this matter? Spectrum is expensive and limited. If stations can overlap geographically on the same frequency without interference, that opens up room for local content and more efficient networks. It’s a big deal for the next-gen ATSC 3.0 standard.

Madeleine Noland, president of ATSC, says the demo shows how broadcast tech is evolving beyond traditional TV. Brazil’s been pushing hard on this, with pilots running in Brasília, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro.

The work proves that international collaboration can move lab experiments into real-world use. For indie creators and small broadcasters, more efficient spectrum could mean more access and opportunity.

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Jimmy Buffett Doc Takes Fans Back to the Coral Reefers’ Key West Origins

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A new documentary is pulling back the curtain on the musicians who helped create Jimmy Buffett’s signature sound.

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD: The First Coral Reefers hits theaters in New York and drops digitally across the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand this Friday, October 30. The film dives into the 1970s and early 1980s to tell the origin story of Buffett’s original Coral Reefer Band, the group that laid the foundation for what became a Parrot Head empire.

Set against the backdrop of Key West, the doc features never-before-seen archival footage and interviews with founding band members, tour managers, producers, and music legends including Kenny Chesney and Mac McAnally. Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges narrates.

Director John H. Cunningham’s film captures the chaos and camaraderie of an era that ran on creative freedom. The documentary premiered at Santa Barbara International Film Festival earlier this year and has picked up awards on the festival circuit.

For Buffett fans, it’s a chance to meet the people behind the hits and understand the volatile, magical moment that shaped one of music’s most distinctive sounds. The film runs 92 minutes and opens with Q&As in New York at Village East.

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Zombie Sequel ‘Apocalypse Z: New World’ Hits Prime Video Just in Time for Halloween

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The zombie apocalypse is back. Apocalypse Z: New World drops on Prime Video October 30, giving horror fans a Halloween treat courtesy of the franchise that became Prime’s most-watched international original movie.

Director Carles Torrens returns for the sequel, picking up the story in the Canary Islands, now Europe’s last refuge after the TSJ virus outbreak. When a special team heads to the mainland for supplies, Roberto tags along with his own agenda. Things go south fast.

The mission becomes a fight for survival as the crew gets caught between infected hordes and fractured loyalties. At its core, the film asks the genre’s oldest question: do you save yourself, or risk it all for what’s left of humanity?

Carlos Alcaide leads the cast, joined by Julia Martínez, Jose María Yazpik, Berta Vázquez, and Mónica López. Ángel Agudo adapted the screenplay from Manel Loureiro’s novels.

The film premiered at the 2026 Sitges Film Festival before making its US debut at Screamfest Horror Festival LA. Now it’s hitting streaming during the spookiest week of the year.

For post-apocalyptic fans who burned through the first film, this one promises more infected, more tension, and harder choices in a world that’s already fallen apart.

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