Founded in 2008, Vimeo Staff Picks has emerged as one of the preeminent channels for online video and one of the most coveted awards for young filmmakers, having helped launch the careers of many celebrated directors. Out of the millions of videos uploaded to Vimeo in 2018, only 1,238 were Staff Picked and 93 of those exceptional videos were nominated for Best of the Year.
This year — for first time ever — Vimeo is elevating the celebration of their Staff Picks: Best of the Year awards by bringing in a jury of distinguished creators, industry experts and thought leaders to choose the Staff Picks that best exemplify the values of the Staff Picks program (originality, engaging storytelling and exceptional craft). The jurors, including Tony-winning actor & producer Alan Cumming, writer & producer of Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse Phil Lord, 7x world champion surfer Stephanie Gilmore, New York Times first “52 Places” journalist Jada Yuan and Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams, whittled down the nominees to the seven winners.
Best of the Year categories include: Best of Action Sports, Best of Animation, Best of Comedy, Best of Documentary, Best of Drama, Best of Eye Candy and Best of Travel.
On the occasion of the publication of their book The Sopranos Sessions (Abrams Press), TV critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz meet at Holsten’s in Bloomfield, New Jersey, the location of the controversial last scene of The Sopranos. Their wide-ranging conversation covers television, movies, psychiatry, gangsterism, their 20-year friendship, and their experience covering the series for The Star-Ledger of Newark, the newspaper that Tony Soprano picked up at the end of his driveway. The screening will be followed by a discussion between The Sopranos Sessions co-authors Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz and My Dinner with Alan director Kristian Fraga.
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Toby Kebbell, Tatiana Maslany
Destroyer follows the moral and existential odyssey of LAPD detective Erin Bell who, as a young cop, was placed undercover with a gang in the California desert with tragic results. When the leader of that gang re-emerges many years later, she must work her way back through the remaining members and into her own history with them to finally reckon with the demons that destroyed her past.
Starring: Sarah Paulson, Bruce Willis, James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor-Joy
From UNBREAKABLE, Bruce Willis returns as David Dunn as does Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price, known also by his pseudonym Mr. Glass. Joining from SPLIT are James McAvoy, reprising his role as Kevin Wendell Crumb and the multiple identities who reside within, and Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey Cooke, the only captive to survive an encounter with The Beast.
Following the conclusion of Split, Glass finds Dunn pursuing Crumb’s superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Price emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men.
Starring: Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justin Theroux, Kathy Bates, Sam Waterston
The film tells an inspiring and spirited true story that follows young lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg as she teams with her husband Marty to bring a groundbreaking case before the U.S. Court of Appeals and overturn a century of gender discrimination. The feature will premiere in 2018 in line with Justice Ginsburg’s 25th anniversary on the Supreme Court.
Starring: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren
Arthur Curry learns that he is the heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, and must step forward to lead his people and be a hero to the world.
Starring: Logan Marshall-Green, Tammy Blanchard, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Michiel Huisman
In this taut psychological thriller by Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Jennifer’s Body), the tension is palpable when Will shows up to a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife Eden and new husband David. The estranged divorcees’ tragic past haunts an equally eerie present; amid Eden’s suspicious behavior and her mysterious house guests, Will becomes convinced that his invitation was extended with a hidden agenda. Unfolding over one dark evening in the Hollywood Hills, The Invitation blurs layers of mounting paranoia, mystery, and horror until both Will—and the audience—are unsure what threats are real or imagined.
Starring: Michelle Rodriguez, Santiago Douglas, Jaime Tirelli
A high-school senior with a fiery temper and reputation for trouble, Diana lives with her brother and single dad, Sandro, in a housing project in Red Hook. Each week Sandro pays a local trainer to put some meat and muscle on his son, but when Diana decides she, too, wants to be a boxer, he refuses. With dogged determination, Diana begins a grueling training regimen and, under the loving tutelage of her trainer, becomes the gym’s first female champion. The discipline, cunning, and humility required to be a contender are the cold shower Diana needs to focus her ambitions. But when she falls in love with a promising amateur, her priorities are forced into burning focus.
Starring: Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, Sophie Okonedo, Jonny Lee Miller
400 years into the future, disease has wiped out the majority of the world’s population, except one walled city, Bregna, ruled by a congress of scientists. When Æon Flux, the top operative in the underground ‘Monican’ rebellion, is sent on a mission to kill a government leader, she uncovers a world of secrets.
