THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER – 327 short docs are set to be screened at the fest.

The lineup has been unveiled for the 22nd annual Palm Springs International ShortFest.

Films will span topics from Alzheimer’s to climate change and will include the acting and voice talents of such stars as Kristen Wiig, Zosia Mamet, Steve Buscemi and James Franco.

Jack O’Connell will star in the short Home, Richard Kind will appear in director Jake Honig’s Black Swell and Saturday Night Live player Beck Bennett will be seen in the short comedy How to Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps, which also features a cameo from Conan O’Brien.

Over the course of the fest’s 22 years, 101 films that screened have gone on to receive Oscar nominations. At this year’s event, 327 films will be screened, which will include 46 world premieres among the entries from across the globe.

“We are showing more documentaries, more experimental films and more of the hard to categorize, hybrid films which play with film form in exciting ways,” programming director Penelope Bartlett said Thursday in a statement. “We cast the net far and wide to ensure we had more films from less represented regions, like Africa and the Middle East, and films by indigenous filmmakers and filmmakers of color.”

The event is set to run June 21-27 at the Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs.

The full ShortFest lineup can be found here.

Jack O’Connell is featured on the cover of the Summer 2016 issue of Interview Germany. You can find the cover and some gorgeous outtakes in our gallery!

ENTERTAINMENT FOCUS – Jack O’Connell and Holliday Grainger have teamed up to create a powerful short-film titled Home.

Shot in three countries, the film supported by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, will screen in selected cinemas nationwide from Monday 20th June.

As thousands of men, women and children attempt to get into Europe, Home follows a comfortable English family who experience a life-changing journey of their own.

The ambition of the 20-minute film is to address the current refugee crisis and help drive global awareness to support UNHCR’s World Refugee Day on Monday 20th June.

Jack O’Connell and Holliday Grainger get behind the refugee crisis along with the support of artists including Coldplay, Dizzee Rascal and Wiley who all donated music for the soundtrack too.

Written and directed by BAFTA-winning director, Daniel Mulloy, Home aims to remind the viewer that refugees are just like you or I – fathers, mothers, sons and daughters – for whom the meaning of the word “home” has undergone a traumatic re-evaluation.

Welcoming the UK launch of Home Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UK Representative for UNHCR, said: “UNHCR is delighted to support HOME. The film is a powerful reminder of the importance of a place to call home, which, when people are forced to flee, can be lost in an instant. At a time of unprecedented forced displacement around the world, HOME is a powerful reminder that becoming a refugee can happen to any one of us.”

Daniel Mulloy, the Director of Home, says: “We want to address the disconnect with refugees and do something to rip down the sense of them and us.”

Actress Arta Dobroshi, Executive Producer of Home says: “When I was living in a war zone, and then became a refugee, I used to think that if countries in freedom would feel what we are feeling at this moment. If they would see us as their families, just for one minute, they would help. And this is exactly what Home does, it puts you in the shoes of refugees.”

The project is further supported by leading augmented reality and visual discovery app Blippar. For the first time ever on World Refugee Day, 20th June, users can show their support of refugees in crisis by”blipping”(scanning) their hand through the Blippar app. This allows them to show support by signing the petition, watching the film and spreading the unique hashtag which will be announced on 9th June 2016.

Home was funded and produced by Black Sheep Studios, Somesuch and Dokufest, with donations from Open Society Foundation-London, United Agencies in Kosovo, USAID and the films cast and crew among many others.

Jack O’Connell, whose previous lead roles include Starred Up, ’71 and Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, discusses his latest film in which he plays a disgruntled New Yorker with a grudge who takes George Clooney’s character hostage in the financial thriller Money Monster, directed by Jodie Foster.

Seeing Round Corners at Turner Contemporary in Margate explores the role of the circle in art. From sculpture to film and painting to performance, the exhibition brings together works by leading historical and contemporary artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Barbara Hepworth, JMW Turner and Anish Kapoor. Art historian and critic Richard Cork reviews.

Jason Solomons rates the contenders for the Palme d’Or as the Cannes Film Festival comes to an end this week.

Spymonkey’s The Complete Deaths brings all of the killings in Shakespeare’s works into one play. Kirsty speaks to actor Toby Park and director Tim Crouch.

I have added high quality photos of Jack attending a premiere of Money Monster in Madrid Spain at the Picasso Tower earlier today to the gallery! Keep checking the gallery for more photos to be added tomorrow.

FLAUNT – Jack O’Connell pauses, rakes his knuckles across his knees, and shouts, with a northern English kind of muscularity, “Ooff.”

I’ve just asked him to describe his perfect night out—his version of a truly good time. The 25-year- old is sitting with me today to talk about the future. He doesn’t want to trip down the path Hollywood continually prods him along; to play the scar-faced bullyboy for the rest of his life. Had I asked him this question back when he was auditioning for parts at the Royal Court, in the thick of a year-long Young Offender’s Referral Order as a late teen, I suspect his answer would have been brief: “To stay out of jail.”

Instead, he talks about wide horizons. Good music, a decent crowd, a stunning backdrop. Oh, and nice quality beverages. “Not just tinnies.”

O’Connell—who stars this spring in Jodie Foster’s reality TV thriller, Money Monster—grew up in rural Derby. You can trace the trouble he got into there along the ridge of his forehead, where flesh is divided by thick, ruler-straight stress marks. It’s a toughness that has brought him film roles and fashion gigs; from a starring part in David Mackenzie’s drama Starred Up (2013)—where he plays a savagely hotheaded prisoner—to a Prada shoot with Craig McDean—where he appears in a taut, noisily patterned turtleneck, swizzling a gin tumbler. Shane Meadows spotted his leatheriness early on, casting him as bovver-booted gang protégé in 2006’s brilliant, bleak, fascism tome, This Is England.

There was always a strange sadness to O’Connell’s violence, though. In an early days This Is England audition tape, he raps as part of a three-piece hip-hop group, a knock-off designer tee jangling around his knees. “I’m a tough little cunt and I’ve got no hair,” he spits, almost melancholically. “I’ll put you down and I don’t care.” Then there was ITV’s cop soap The Bill, in which he depicts sexually abused 13-year-old Ross Trescot, who rapes a middle aged policewoman. For the largest part of O’Connell’s decade-long career, he’s played characters that are bad because bad things have happened to them: in turn, his performances are both brutal and beckoning.
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Jack O’Connell attended a photocall for Money Monster earlier today at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, Germany. You can check out high quality photos from the photocall in our gallery!

I have added high quality photos of Jack attending The 8th Annual Filmmakers Dinner hosted by Charles Finch and Jaeger Le-Coultre at Hotel du Cap-Eden Roc yesterday to the gallery!