Featured This Week:
Behind the scenes of CNN's HQ Trivia film.
Navalny wows at the 2023 BAFTA Awards.
Honoring Black History Month with CNN.
CNN Special report on the war in Ukraine.
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Director's Letter: Salima Koroma talks life on-set of CNN's new HQ Trivia documentary |
On Sunday, March 5 at 9 p.m. ET/PT, CNN will broadcast Glitch: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia, a CNN Film documenting the rise and fall of HQ Trivia, a revolutionary game show app that swept America before it suddenly imploded.
Told through the eyes of former host Scott Rogowsky and other first-person players from inside and outside the company, Emmy® Award-winning director Salima Koroma takes audiences behind the scenes of the once-ubiquitous mobile game show app.
Here's an exclusive letter from Koroma about the film:
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When I was approached to make this documentary, I’d never heard of HQ Trivia. Can you believe it? I missed an entire phenomenon, while most of my friends had played it daily. However, that was creatively advantageous because I came into the story with a clean slate. No preconceptions.
I was also pretty ecstatic. One of my favorite documentaries of all time is Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, about the collapse of the Enron corporation back in 2000; I’ve always wanted to tell a story about the hubris of businessmen.
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Today, the businessmen who make the WeWorks, the Twitters, and the HQ Trivias are hailed as the rockstars of our age. But a lot of them are simply emperors with no clothes on. In this film, we wanted to ask, “Why did HQ collapse?” How did a wildly successful modern media company crash and burn in the blink of an eye?
To find that out, I spoke with employees, players, investors, developers, designers, game show experts, authors, hackers, parents, hosts, journalists, and more. I poured through hundreds of documents, spotting the truth from the lies— a year's worth of research I had to make sense of.
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And what ultimately emerges is a story of two founders who created magic together but found their relationship crumbling under the pressures of newfound fame.
A special thank you to the dozens of print reporters who wrote amazing stories about HQ. Reporters who’d spent years investigating that company and its founders. Reporters who’d written immaculate, sprawling essays about HQ’s insane rise and ultimate demise. Reporters who gave me deep, deep insight into what was going on at that company.
Some of you will watch the film and say, “Oh yeah, I remember HQ Trivia! I forgot about that!” It’s true—HQ Trivia was a far-out fever dream, and I hope you all enjoy our documentary.
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CNN's Navalny wins big at the 2023 BAFTA Awards |
The 73rd annual BAFTA Film Awards was nothing short of a celebration, meme-worthy moments and historical wins. The star-studded event occurred this past Sunday in London before an audience whose attendees included Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett, Austin Butler and the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Among the night's list of winners was CNN's critically acclaimed film Navalny, which took home a BAFTA for Best Documentary— a first for the cable news network.
The documentary has set the award circuit ablaze, earning an Audience Award and Festival Favorite Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and a 2023 Critics' Choice Award for Best Political Documentary, to name a few.
The film has also received a nomination for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards, which airs Sunday, March 12 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.
Click here for a complete list of Sunday's BAFTA winners, and stream the award-winning documentary film on HBO Max. There is also a limited theatrical re-release in major cities starting today.
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Celebrating Black History Month with CNN |
In honor of Black History Month, our Keep Watching team has curated a weekly highlight of our favorite CNN Films and Original Series showcasing Black voices and perspectives.
This week’s highlight is Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union, a three-part HBO series that follows the personal and political journey of President Barack Obama, weaving together conversations with his colleagues, friends, and critics alongside his speeches and interviews.
Click here to watch the trailer.
As part of the network's Black History Month programming, CNN will air the entire documentary series this weekend. The first two episodes air Saturday at 8 and 10 p.m. ET. And the final episode airs Sunday at 9 p.m. ET.
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CNN marks one year of war in Ukraine |
This Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, CNN will air a new special report by Clarissa Ward, who treks across Ukraine to explore the extraordinary resilience and unwavering will to win of ordinary Ukrainians throughout the nation's fight against Russia.
The CNN Special Report, The Will to Win: Ukraine at War, revisits many of the locations Ward reported from in the past year, including Kharkiv, where she reported live as the invasion began. She reunites with paramedics she followed on a shift last spring as Russian artillery smashed into the residential building where the team was treating victims.
In this hour-long primetime special broadcast on CNN, CNN International and CNN en Español, Ward tells the story of this war through the eyes of Ukrainian fighters, volunteers, and leaders who have endured the unthinkable and continue to fight.
For the latest on the crisis in Ukraine, check out these stories:
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This edition was written by Alexis Garfield and edited by Janelle Davis. |
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