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If you’re wondering where the next Damien Chazelle will come from, look no further than the 2017 Sundance Film Festival short film lineup.

Sundance has a long history of discovering the next generation of acclaimed filmmakers by first championing their short films. Chazelle made his first big splash by winning the 2013 Grand Jury Prize for “Whiplash” (the short). Last year, Jim Cummings won that prize for “Thunder Road,” and he’s back this year with a new short. Also generating a lot of pre-festival buzz is Kristen Stewart, making her writing/directing debut with the short “Come Swim.”

Before the Sundance Film Festival commences on January 19, 2017, here’s a briefing on Cummings’ “The Robbery,” Stewart’s “Come Swim” and eight other buzzworthy shorts (two of which are viewable online).

IndieWire reached out to the filmmakers to ask about their inspiration, production challenges and future projects. Check out our list below,...

For over a century, the densely populated walled city of Kowloon was embedded in the heart of Hong Kong, growing into a self-sustained, surreal and often lawless underworld. Photo: Jidanni/Wikimedia Commons Originally established as a Chinese military base, Kowloon was surrounded by high fortified walls from the very beginning. The population within those walls increased greatly during Hong Kong's occupation by Japan in World War II, then spiked again after the war, when it received a huge number of refugees. By the late '80s, the walled city claimed over 33,000 residents, all within an area of only 6 1/2 acres. The settlement was so densely packed that many areas never saw sunlight. Photo4 © Michael Wolf In the decades after the war, Kowloon was a self-sufficient society, mostly free from jurisdiction of Hong Kong, and largely under the control of organized crime – including underworld syndicates like the infamous Triads – who turned the...

Nordic region's biggest bank fills all seats in downtown Stockholm cinema to watch Martin Scorsese's film about banking excess

Bankers across Europe are filling cinema seats for a sneak peek at The Wolf of Wall Street, booking out entire theatres and rolling out the red carpet for clients, apparently eager to showcase a film about excess in their own industry.

Nordea, the Nordic region's biggest bank, booked all 140 seats in a downtown Stockholm cinema on Thursday, sectioning off part of the movie theatre for clients and timing the event to begin after local markets had closed.

The Italian stock exchange is showing the film on-site next week while the after-party of the recent Paris premiere was held at the former site of the Paris bourse.

The film, which officially opens in Europe next week, is based on the memoir of a disgraced Us stockbroker, Jordan Belfort. He made a fortune by,...

Looks like Yahoo is more concerned about the Third Point founder’s intentions than everyone let on early this week when they announced that the company would pay $1.16B for 40M of Daniel Loeb’s shares, bringing his stake below 2%. The agreement also includes an extended standstill agreement, which prevents Loeb from moving against Yahoo management into 2018, according to an SEC filing today. It bars the hedge fund from owning more than 3% of Yahoo’s shares. Loeb can’t solicit proxies or make a shareholder proposal. The activist investor also would need board approval before he could participate in a merger or a restructuring or recapitalization involving one of Yahoo’s subsidiaries or affiliates. The Internet company said that it wouldn’t disparage Loeb and his colleagues, Michael Wolf and Harry Wilson — all of whom will resign from the board at the end of this month. Loeb is an investor...

Yahoo shares are down more than 3% this morning after the company said that it has bought back most of the shares owned by Third Point’s Daniel Loeb — leading him and colleagues Harry Wilson and Michael Wolf to resign from the board at the end of this month. ”Since our Board’s rigorous search led us to hire Marissa Mayer as CEO, Yahoo!’s stock price has nearly doubled, delivering significant value for shareholders,” Loeb says. “I’m confident that with Marissa at the helm and her team’s focus on innovation and engaging users, Yahoo! has a bright future.” The agreement to buy 40M of Loeb’s shares, at $29.11 apiece, will bring his stake in the company below 2% — and will count toward the company’s plan to repurchase $1.9B of its stock. Loeb is an investor in Variety with Deadline’s parent company Pmc. The sale makes sense for Loeb,...

Aaron Swartz, an outspoken opponent of Sopa and gifted tech pioneer who helped create RSS software as a teenager, has died of an apparent suicide at the age of 26. The New York Times confirmed Schwartz's death with his uncle, Michael Wolf, who reported that the programmer's girlfriend discovered his body on Friday and that he appeared to have hanged himself. In July 2011, a federal grand jury indicted Swartz for his unauthorized downloading of 4.8 million academic documents from MIT's Jstor, a by-subscription-only archive. Story: MPAA Chief Chris Dodd Offers Olive Branch to Tech Industry Over Sopa Pending

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Update, 12:31 Pm: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson told the board over the weekend that he has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The WSJ says the disclosure might have impacted the company’s decision to accept Thompson’s resignation. The report adds that Thompson began telling colleagues as early as Friday that he was stepping down. Meanwhile, CNNMoney is reporting that Thompson could owe up to $7 million in upfront bonus money he received when he was hired in January. Related: New Yahoo CEO Could Make $27M in 2012 Previous, Sunday Pm: It’s official: Thompson’s four-month reign is over, following the disclosure that he misrepresented his bachelors’ degree. He “has left the Company,” Yahoo says — and the board has a deal with Third Point CEO Daniel Loeb, who has abandoned his proxy fight. Ross Levinsohn replaces Thompson as interim chief executive “effective immediately.” Roy...

Third Point CEO Daniel Loeb, who controls 5.8% of Yahoo’s shares, continues to punch away at the Yahoo board — which seems to already be on the ropes following the disclosure that Thompson misrepresented his bachelor’s degree. This morning Loeb sent directors a letter urging them to place himself and three colleagues (including former NBCUniversal chief Jeff Zucker) on Yahoo’s board. He wants them to name an interim CEO to replace Thompson. And he wants one of his allies, media consultant Michael Wolf, to chair a search committee to find a full time replacement. “Third Point has over $1 billion invested in Yahoo! and we take no joy in witnessing this carnage,” Loeb writes. “This Board’s unchecked value destruction must stop once and for all.” Thompson apologized to Yahoo employees in a memo this week for “how this issue has affected the company and all of you.” Yahoo says...

Former Criminal Minds showrunner Ed Bernero has signed with CAA. Bernero also co-created with John Wells NBC’s Third Watch, which was inspired by his experiences as a police officer with the Chicago Police Department. Bernero, who was with UTA, continues to be with attorney is Tom Hoberman. Also signing with CAA is bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman. He has written 27 best-sellers featuring his psychologist, crime-solving character Alex Delaware and has sold over 75 million books. His latest book, Victims, is currently a The New York Times Best-Seller and he just signed a new contract with Random House to publish four more. Kellerman also is writing a supernatural thriller, which will be published by Putnam in May 2013. Kellerman, who has a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and continues to teach, is with attorneys Michael Wolf and Neal Tabachnick.

Hedge fund Third Point, which owns 5.8% of Yahoo’s shares, chided CEO Scott Thompson for failing to lay out his strategic plan before he fired about 2,000 employees today. The fund, run by Daniel Loeb, says the fifth major cutback in the last five years was “unfortunately necessary.” But it notes that Yahoo’s board said in September that it planned a “comprehensive strategic review,” while Thompson said in January that he had “some very clear ideas about the specifics of what we’ll do.” To date, though, “shareholders and remaining employees have heard few such specifics.” Meanwhile, many of the company’s “senior-level employees and investors have apparently seen enough and heard too little, and have independently staged an exodus, weighing on the company’s share price.” Loeb says this is a reason for shareholders to support his slate of four directors which, in addition to himself, include corporate restructuring expert Harry Wilson,...

The Internet company made it official this morning: It has started to tell about 2,000 employees that they’re being sacrificed “as part of an overall plan to reshape the Company for the future,” Yahoo says in an SEC filing. Although Yahoo doesn’t know exactly how much this will cost, it estimates that it will take a pre-tax charge of as much as $145M, most of it to be recognized in the current quarter which ends in June. “The pre-tax cash charge estimate does not include facilities, lease or other charges the Company may incur as part of this action,” Yahoo says. Reports about the firings from the 14,000-plus work force have circulated for weeks, and were expected to focus on the products, research and marketing divisions. Yahoo is struggling to chart a new course amid turmoil at the top with the firing last year of Carol Bartz as CEO...

Third Point’s planned proxy fight for four seats on Yahoo’s board grows more interesting by the day. Today the hedge fund’s CEO, Daniel Loeb, fired back at the company for refusing to accept two members of his dissident slate — media consultant Michael Wolf, and former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Zucker — and especially Loeb himself. “You told me that the Board felt my experience and knowledge ‘would not be additive to the Board’ and that as Yahoo!’s largest outside shareholder, I would be ‘conflicted’ as a Director,” Loeb said in a letter to CEO Scott Thompson. Loeb says: “Only in an illogical Alice-in-Wonderland world” would that be said of someone who owns 5.8% of Yahoo’s voting shares, equal to about $1B. He notes that Thompson said Loeb might be too interested in policies that would generate a quick payoff. “This theory appears, seemingly like many of the Board’s conclusions,...

Yahoo’s effort to make peace with hedge fund Third Point, the company’s staunchest critic and owner of 5.8% of the voting shares, was a bust. The struggling Internet giant hoped to end Third Point’s planned proxy fight by naming three independent directors — including former Discovery COO and Fox Entertainment exec Peter Liguori — and giving the fund a say in the choice of two other directors. Yahoo says that ”there is value in avoiding the cost and distraction that inevitably accompanies a proxy fight.” But Third Point rejected the plan, saying that it shows “one of Yahoo!’s paramount principles of corporate governance is ‘Shareholders not welcome’.” That leaves the fund with “no choice but to take our case directly to our fellow shareholders…Yahoo!’s shareholders deserve a voice and a choice. We intend to provide them with one at this year’s Annual Meeting.” Third Point’s...

New York - Activist hedge fund Third Point had more criticism for Yahoo in a regulatory filing Wednesday that asked shareholders of the Internet firm to support its four alternative candidates for seats on the firm's board to inject media and entertainment expertise. The fund, which has a 5.8 percent voting stake in Yahoo, has pushed for its CEO Daniel Loeb, former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Zucker, media and entertainment industry consultant Michael Wolf and restructuring expert Harry Wilson as Yahoo board members. Third Point is asking shareholders to allow it to vote for them on their behalf, arguing that Yahoo, led by

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Yahoo shareholder Dan Loeb, a regular critic of the company’s management, weighed in on the recent departures of co-founder Jerry Yang and Board Chairman Roy Bostock on Tuesday, recommending four new directors in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Loeb suggested himself – no surprise there – along with former NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker, former MTV President Michael Wolf and Maeva Group CEO Harry Wilson. These candidates, in Loeb’s opinion, would bring the requisite business and restructuring experience to shepherd Yahoo’s resurrection. An early Internet titan, Yahoo has struggled with...