The first weekend of Millennium Docs Against Gravity – the prestigious international film festival in Poland – is underway after opening with Closure, the new film directed by Warsaw native Michał Marczak.

The wrenching documentary about a father’s desperate search for his missing teenage son won the Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece in March and premiered in World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance.

Marczak’s journey to make the film began as he spent time on the Vistula River in Warsaw. While on a raft with his family – the director was scouting locations for a fiction project — he noticed a man plying the waters intently in a boat. After engaging him in conversation, Marczak learned the man, named Daniel, was looking for his son Chris who had last been seen standing on the Warsaw Bridge overlooking the river.

“A rotating CCTV camera caught [Chris] there standing for 20 minutes. And as it swung back around, we don’t know if he jumped or made it off the bridge and possibly escaped,” Marczak told Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast. “The father decided to search the river by himself. He built this custom-made boat outfitted with cameras, sonars, drones to probe the murky waters. So, it’s a ‘an old man in the sea’ type of a story, a Fitzcarraldo-type character, fighting against all odds to find the truth about what happened.”

Marczak spent many months with Daniel as he continued his search, sometimes the two of them camping along the river.

“Many times, it was just easier to sleep on these islands or banks and so that you don’t waste time and that most of the time goes for the search,” he recalled. “After [searching] for hours and you sit down at night, exhausted, by the campfire, all these thoughts come to you — about what could I be doing better, or how could I navigate the challenges of raising my now two sons in this world? And where, as a society, we have gone wrong… Totally desolate, empty nature yields these kinds of more metaphysical conversations. So, we would just sit and contemplate our lives. And I would ask him for advice. He would ask me, and that’s how we became close to each other.”

Without knowing if his son jumped to his death or perhaps left the bridge and is still alive somewhere, Daniel cannot find closure, nor can his wife. Daniel keeps searching month upon month, unable to give up on his son, even as his father counsels against continuing what could be considered an obsession.

“It’s a psychological film about the effects of that situation on the family and on Daniel,” Marczak notes, adding, “and on other families as well.” Other families whose loved ones have gone missing after hurling themselves from the bridge.

Introducing the film at the Multikino Złote Tarasy venue in Warsaw, MDAG Artistic Director Karol Piekarczyk said Closure had helped him deal with grief in his own life. The impact of Closure has been similarly profound for many viewers. In Thessaloniki, Marczak told us about a voicemail he received from a person who had seen the documentary.

“He said, ‘Listen, I’ve had some bad days. I’ve had really deep, dark thoughts. But after I saw your movie, I know that I’m never, ever going to commit suicide,’” the director recalled. “And I cried when I heard that message.”

At the festival in Greece, Marczak told us the film came together at almost lightning speed by documentary standards.

“We did this movie in 14 months from the moment we met the protagonist and we shot for a year,” Marczak explained. “We were super-fast editing as we went, just really trying to stretch our resources and to get this movie out.”

In addition to Sundance and Thessaloniki, Closure has screened at True/False in Columbia, MO and will screen next month at Sheffield DocFest in the UK and at the Sydney Film Festival in Australia.

Nate Bargatze — one of the world’s top-selling stand-up comedians — wants to make his upcoming family movie The Breadwinner affordable for everyone to watch on he big screen.

The TriStar and Sony release opens in theaters on May 29, and marks his most high-profile project since hosting the Emmy Awards ceremony in September.

Based on an original script he wrote with Dan Lagana and directed by Eric Appel, The Breadwinner stars Bargatze as salesman Nate Wilcox and Mandy Moore as Katie, who is the ultimate mom. But when Katie’s household invention leads to a once-in-a-lifetime deal on Shark Tank and takes her on a prolonged business trip, Nate has to figure out how to keep the house from (literally) falling apart. He and his kids soon learn that while he may not do it like mom, he can figure out how to do it his way.

Studios can’t dictate pricing policies, but Bargatze is hopeful that cinema operators will treat The Breadwinner the same way they supported discounted pricing for showing of 80 for Brady.

Soon after Bargatze announced the “Nate Rate” on Instagram, insiders say AMC Theatres, the largest chain in the country, are among a number of circuits that have already agreed to use matinee pricing for showings of The Breadwinnner, while Cinemark may discount prices by as much as 25 percent. Pricing and availability will vary, so audiences will need to check their local listings.

“Hello, everybody! My movie The Breadwinner is coming out May 29 and I’ve got something very exciting that I wanted to let you know,” wrote Bargatze in his post. “So the Nate Rate is a special kind of lower ticket price because we want everyone to come out to this movie. This movie is for your grandparents, grandkids, aunts, uncles, friends, sister…anybody. Your dog. Cats I think will love this movie, specifically. Anybody that wants to come out.”

When interviewed for The Hollywood Reporter’s 2025 cover story on Bargatze — hailed as the “Nicest Man in Standup” — TriStar Pictures president Nicole Brown discussed The Breadwinner’s appeal for the Sony label. “The idea of his first film being so personal and authentic to him and his comedy felt like the perfect foray, and he’d really identified a space,” she said. “He was like, ‘I want to be able to watch a film with my whole family. We can go watch animation now, but there’s nothing with real people in it.’”  

The Miami-Dade narcotics officers who seized $22 million stashed in orange buckets in 2016 are suing the production companies of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for defamation, saying the Netflix police thriller “The Rip,” inspired by their high-profile bust, falsely portrayed them as corrupt.

Filed Tuesday in a Florida federal district court, the lawsuit names as defendants Artists Equity, the production company founded by Damon and Affleck, as well as co-producer Falco Pictures, their one-off LLC for the project. Damon and Affleck were co-leads on “The Rip,” as well as co-producers.

The plaintiffs, Jason Smith and Jonathan Santana, are seeking unspecified damages for defamation, defamation by implication and intentional infliction of emotional distress. A spokesperson for Netflix, which is not named as a defendant, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.

The police thriller was marketed as “inspired by true events,” but the lawsuit says the movie borrowed heavily from a real June 29, 2016 Miami-Dade narcotics investigation in which officers discovered nearly $22 million in cash hidden in orange buckets behind a false wall inside a Miami Lakes home. The plaintiffs say the film recreated several distinctive details from the case while falsely depicting the officers involved as corrupt and criminal.

Smith and Santana allege that anyone familiar with the case easily connected them to the fictional officers portrayed by Damon and Affleck. The lawsuit claims family members, colleagues and even prosecutors questioned the officers after seeing the film or its trailer, asking “which character they were” and “how many buckets they kept.”

The suit says the actual 2016 seizure — the largest cash seizure in Miami-Dade Police Department history — involved officers lawfully discovering $21,970,411 hidden in orange buckets concealed behind drywall. The complaint states Santana was the lead detective on the case while Smith supervised the operation.

The officers say “The Rip” added fabricated plotlines involving police corruption, theft schemes, cartel dealings and murder. The complaint cites scenes in which officers discuss stealing seized money, lying to suspects, concealing evidence from superiors and communicating directly with cartel members. The suit also alleges the film depicts officers tied to the seizure as being implicated in the murder of a fellow officer and later killing a DEA agent.

The officers say they warned the filmmakers before and after “The Rip” was released, sending a cease-and-desist letter in December 2025 objecting to the trailer and promotional materials. The complaint further alleges that a Miami-Dade officer who consulted on the film later contacted the plaintiffs on behalf of director Joe Carnahan to apologize and offer consulting opportunities on a future project.

Affleck and Damon founded Artists Equity in 2022 with financial backing from RedBird Capital. Affleck serves as chief executive officer while Damon is chief creative officer.