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From STAR WARS to GAME OF THRONES and WENTWORTH, screen fans and industry can hear from some of the biggest names in entertainment thanks to a new online festival AACTA ScreenFest, coming to our screens this November.

AACTA will present over 40 free online events as part of ScreenFest, including cast and crew conversations, masterclasses, international film and TV showcases, the best short films made this year, special event screenings, online gaming events as well as sessions with social media content creators.

Talented on-screen and behind-the-scenes names form an important part of ScreenFest, including Anna Torv (MINDHUNTER, SECRET CITY) and cinematographer Greig Fraser, fresh from his Emmy win for THE MANDALORIAN and ahead of the hotly anticipated DUNE and THE BATMAN. Australian Production Designer and four-time Emmy winner Deborah Riley will also take audiences behind the curtains of GAME OF THRONES, while Australia’s Oscar-winning short filmmakers Shaun Tan and Adam Elliot will lead masterclasses on drawing for screen, story formation and animation.
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Ever since the second season of Netflix’s period FBI-agents-and-serial-killers drama Mindhunter was released 14 months ago, fans have been wondering about the possibility of one more round. Hopes flagged when the show’s leads, Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, and Anna Torv, were released from their contracts in January and the show was put on “indefinite hold.” Now, David Fincher, Mindhunter’s executive producer, most frequent director, and de facto showrunner, has seemed to confirmed that the Pittsburgh-shot series is indeed two-and-done. “We lived there for almost three years,” he said during an interview about his new film Mank. “Not year in and year out, but … probably six or seven months a year … Mindhunter was a lot for me.”

Fincher says that at the start of the second season, he “ended up looking at what was written and deciding I didn’t like any of it, so we tossed it and started over.” He promoted Courtenay Miles, who had been working on the series as an assistant director, to co-showrun; still, he said, “It’s a 90-hour workweek. It absorbs everything in your life. When I got done, I was pretty exhausted, and I said, ‘I don’t know if I have it in me right now to break season three.’” Netflix didn’t argue; CEO Ted Sarandos and Cindy Holland, at the time the company’s VP for original content, just asked Fincher if there was something else he wanted to work on (thus Mank).

“Listen, for the viewership that it had, it was a very expensive show,” Fincher said. “We talked about, ‘Finish Mank and then see how you feel,’ but I honestly don’t think we’re going to be able to do it for less than I did season two. And on some level, you have to be realistic — dollars have to equal eyeballs.” Apparently, that math does not work in Mindhunter’s favor, although Netflix is willing to keep the door a tiny crack open. Confirming that a third season was not in the offing, a spokesperson added, “Maybe in five years.”
Credit: Variety

Cue Agent Holden Ford’s next death glare: A potential third season of Mindhunter has been put on indefinite hold and cast members Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany and Anna Torv have been released from their contracts. Exec producer David Fincher’s busy schedule precipitated the move. The show has not, however, been cancelled.

“David is focused on directing his first Netflix film Mank and on producing the second season of Love, Death and Robots,” a Netflix rep said in a statement to TVLine. “He may revisit Mindhunter again in the future, but in the meantime felt it wasn’t fair to the actors to hold them from seeking other work while he was exploring new work of his own.”

Fincher’s slow-burn psychological thriller centered on two FBI agents (Groff and McCallany) and a psychologist (Torv) working withinthe bureau’s Behavioral Science Unit. Together, the trio interviewed serial killers to get a better understanding of their motivations and to (hopefully) solve ongoing cases.

Season 2, which consisted of eight episodes and premiered in August, centered on the Atlanta child murders in 1979-81, during which African-American serial killer Wayne Williams was tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for killing two adult males. Williams, however, was never tried for any of the child murders, 23 of which he was suspected of being involved with.

Other serial killers to be featured in Season 2 include Charles Manson (played by Justified‘s Damon Herriman) and David Berkowitz aka “Son of Sam.”
Credit: TVLine

Featured talent from Mindhunter includes:
David Fincher, Executive Producer & Director
Holt McCallany, “Bill Tench”
Anna Torv, “Dr. Wendy Carr”

Paley Center Member Tickets- $15 each
General Public Tickets – $20 each

Netflix’s gripping, unsettling psychological drama Mindhunter is a show in which two men – FBI agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) – interview dozens of incarcerated serial killers in the 1970s, developing the methodology we now know as criminal profiling. Between the male-dominated Bureau and the (so far) entirely male interview subjects, the show could easily become a testosterone fest.

But it never does, thanks, in part, to its numerous female writers, and in part to Anna Torv’s commanding, nuanced performance as Dr. Wendy Carr. A psychology professor hired to bring scientific legitimacy to Ford and Tench’s nascent work, Wendy’s role is to analyze what serial killers say about themselves and develop insights from there. As was hinted in season one and becomes much clearer in season two, Wendy’s unflappable exterior belies a complex inner life: she is gay, and unable to be publicly out in an era where homosexuality had only recently been removed from the DSM as a mental disorder.

ELLE.com sat down with Torv to discuss Wendy’s experience as a closeted woman in the 1970s, our cultural fascination with Charles Manson, and why it matters that Wendy is not “the heart” of Mindhunter.
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[This article contains spoilers for Season 2 of “Mindhunter.”]

The Netflix drama “Mindhunter” is about an F.B.I. unit that studies serial killers, but the series is all tell, no show — most of the violence is described rather than depicted.

Another sleight-of-hand is that one of the most compelling characters in the second season, which dropped on Aug. 16, is not one of the killers or agents but the unit’s coolly dispassionate psychologist on loan from academia, Dr. Wendy Carr, as portrayed by the Australian actress Anna Torv.

Torv first came to the attention of American viewers on the Fox series “Fringe” (2008-13), in which she played both the F.B.I. agent Olivia Dunham and her alternate-universe version, referred to as Fauxlivia. At one point they even fought each other, predating Tatiana Maslany’s clone wars on “Orphan Black” by a few years.
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This post contains spoilers about Mindhunter season two.

Anna Torv might play the most elegant true-crime junkie on television. In Mindhunter, David Fincher’s feverishly good series about the FBI agents who began interviewing notorious serial killers in the late 1970s, she plays Dr. Wendy Carr, a dapper psychologist and FBI consultant who analyzes murderers and helps the profiling team understand what motivates them to commit such heinous crimes. But unlike costar Holt McCallany, who plays agent Bill Tench and prepared for the show by writing letters to serial killers David Berkowitz and Ed Kemper, and visiting Manson family member Bobby Beausoleil, Torv doesn’t consider herself a murderino.
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Jake Hamilton wrapped the first Season 2 interview with the Mindhunter cast! He talks Charles Manson, America’s serial killer obsession, and David Fincher characters with Holt McCallany, Anna Torv, and Jonathan Groff! Check back later this week for additional press junket interviews. Mindhunter Season 2 premieres August 16th on Netflix!

Credit: Jake’s Takes