Danny Boyle, the Oscar-winning English filmmaker best known for 1996’s Trainspotting and 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, will be celebrated with the Maverick Director Award at the upcoming SCAD Savannah Film Festival, the largest university-run film festival in the world.

Boyle will be presented with the honor at the Lucas Theatre on Sunday, Oct. 25, at 12:45 p.m., right before a gala screening of his latest film, Ink, which centers on the media-changing relationship between Australian businessman Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce) and English newspaperman Larry Lamb (Jack O’Connell).

At the conclusion of the film, Boyle will return to the stage and join yours truly for an hourlong career-retrospective conversation that will be recorded for subsequent airing on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast.

Christina Routhier, the SCAD Savannah Film Festival’s executive director, tells THR: “Danny Boyle is a true force in modern cinema, and Ink is yet another striking testament to his singular vision, making him the absolute definition of a Maverick Director. We’re excited to join forces with The Hollywood Reporter and Scott Feinberg for Awards Chatter, which is always a highlight for us, giving our SCAD students and audiences a behind-the-scenes look into the mind of a master storyteller.”

Boyle, who will turn 70 five days before the festivities, has been one of the most innovative and admired filmmakers in the world for more than 30 years. He made his name with a couple of indies, 1994’s Shallow Grave and 1996’s Trainspotting, before venturing into more mainstream territory with 2000’s The Beach and 2002’s 28 Days Later. Then came awards-friendly fare: 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, 2010’s 127 Hours, 2015’s Steve Jobs and now Ink, which Boyle, O’Connell and writer James Graham discussed with THR following its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival.

Awards Chatter recently turned 11 years old and is nearing its 700th episode. Past guests have included Martin Scorsese, Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey, Harrison Ford, Elton John, Barbra Streisand, Jerry Seinfeld, Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Lawrence, Sean Penn, Snoop Dogg, Julia Roberts, Michael B. Jordan, Norman Lear, Sophia Loren, George Clooney, Will Smith, Carol Burnett, Robert De Niro, Dwayne Johnson, Angelina Jolie, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Hart, Margot Robbie, Lorne Michaels, Seth Rogen, Kate Winslet, David Letterman, Lady Gaga, Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, Natalie Portman, Kevin Costner, Sissy Spacek, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bono, Dolly Parton, Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Spike Lee, Audra McDonald, Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Denzel Washington, Ariana Grande, Kevin Costner, Jane Fonda, Tom Hanks, Olivia Rodrigo, Quincy Jones, Billie Eilish, Ed Sheeran, Miley Cyrus, Timothée Chalamet, Tina Fey, Adam Sandler, Ken Burns, Malala Yousafzai, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Kobe Bryant, Gloria Steinem and Buzz Aldrin.

The 29th SCAD Savannah Film Festival will take place Oct. 24-31, and will also honor a host of other notables including Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen, Gemma Chan and Jordan Firstman.

Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s Israeli documentary NAZA, which earned both a Special Jury prize and blowback from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) after a Venice premiere, has now sparked a counter-documentary.

NAZA: The Real Story, from Israeli director and IDF reserve officer Roi Danino, has first-hand testimony from IDF soldiers about how they fought the Gaza war against Hamas and aims to take down the bombshell NAZA whistleblower film. “It is their account, in their own words. Watch it, then decide what you think,” the producers of the rebuttal documentary say on the NAZA: The Real Story website, where the counter film can be viewed.

Abraham and Szor in their The Guardian-produced doc talk to anonymous IDF officers and soldiers who reveal how deliberate and systematic they’ve been in targeting civilians during the Gaza war, (the NAZA of the title is an acronym of a Hebrew expression meaning “collateral damage”).

The IDF on Oct. 1 came out with an official, and lengthy, response to NAZA. The creators of the 49-minute rebuttal film, including fellow IDF reserve officer Ariel Averbuch and Israeli content creator Hagay Gutman, contrast the on-the-record accounts of Israel’s Gaza war they offer with the anonymized Hebrew-language interviews with two dozen IDF veterans that claimed in the original NAZA documentary widespread and systemic misconduct in how Israel operated in Gaza after Oct. 2023.

NAZA: The Real Story, filmed at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv (just like Abraham and Szor’s NAZA), looks to seize the media narrative back from the filmmakers. “[The soldiers] testimonies offer a closer look at the conditions they faced, the dilemmas they encountered and how they describe the conduct of the war,” the producers of NAZA: The Real Story, added on the website.

Abraham and Szor’s NAZA is currently in theaters in Europe and the U.S. The Guardian intends to stream the documentary for free on its website in late November.

NAZA had its U.S. debut at the New York Film Festival, where it played to an enthusiastic crowd inside Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, while drawing a small but intense pro-Israel protest outside the theater.

EXCLUSIVE: Indie publisher Spiegel & Grau has teamed with The Black List to bring its full catalog of frontlist and backlist fiction and nonfiction books to the platform’s material discovery database, enabling industry professionals to identify and explore published books for adaptation.

The partnership is The Black List’s first with an independent publisher.

Spiegel & Grau are best known for award-winning books such as Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and Piper Kerman’s Orange is the New Black and recent bestsellers Beartooth by Callan Wink, The Fire Agent by David Baerwald and Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows.

Film and television adaptations currently underway from the Spiegel & Grau catalogue include Culpability by Bruce Holsinger, under development; Everything/Nothing/Someone by Alice Carrière, under development with producer Lauri Firstenberg/IF Innovation Foundation; Go As A River by Shelley Read, under development with producers Paula Mazur and Mitchell Kaplan at Mazur Kaplan Company (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, All The Bright Places), The Boys by Katie Hafner, under development with producers Ross Katz (In The Bedroom, Lost In Translation) and Jonathan Krauss; among others.

Popular, yet-to-be-adapted Spiegel & Grau catalogue on blcklst.com include Freyja by Margrét Ann Thors; Forest Euphoria by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian; and Out of the Sky by Matti Friedman.

Using their free Black List industry accounts, professionals in the film, television, theater, and publishing industries can now search and browse titles from the Spiegel & Grau catalogue alongside the existing resources hosted on the platform. The integration expands access to published books (including fiction and nonfiction titles) as potential IP).

Spiegel & Grau books can be found via searching by title, author, genre and other associated book information available on blcklst.com. Metadata provided by Spiegel & Grau includes additional information such as a published book’s imprint, book cover art, book description, and more.

This initiative also makes it easier for Spiegel & Grau authors to list their published books in their Black List profile quickly and efficiently, according to S&G. When Spiegel & Grau authors add titles to their Black List profiles, key project fields will be pre-populated, reducing manual entry and ensuring accurate, consistent information across the platform.

Liza Wachter, Spiegel & Grau President and Director of Film and Television, said, “This partnership opens our catalog to the film and television industry in a new way. We’re proud to be the first independent publisher to partner with The Black List.”

“As a reader, I’ve been a fan of Spiegel & Grau for most of my adult life; it is a dream to be partnering with them on this initiative, The Black List’s second with a trade publisher, our first with an indie publisher. The Spiegel & Grau catalogue will be a great resource for TV/Film industry members searching IP for adaptation,” said Randy Winston, Creative Director of Fiction at The Black List.