If there were an award for Film With Greatest Impact On Public Policy, the military-rape documentary "The Invisible War" would appear to be a shoo-in.

Among this year's other top entries for the documentary Oscar, "The Gatekeepers" can't claim an immediate impact on the Israeli government—and "Searching for Sugar Man" didn't force sudden moral upheaval in the music biz. But just two days after seeing "The Invisible War," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a significant change in military policy. That's the documentary equivalent of a box office blockbuster.

Talking with TheWrap's...

When director Robert Zemeckis read the script for "Flight," he knew he was ready to make another live-action movie.

The filmmaker's previous three films -- "The Polar Express," "Beowulf" and "A Christmas Carol" -- were shot in the motion-capture technique, in which human actions are recorded, then used to digitally animate computer characters.

"When this screenplay came along, I thought it shouldn't be done in performance capture, it shouldn't be done in 3D," Zemeckis told the audience Wednesday night at TheWrap's screening series in the Regent Theatre in Westwood. "I'm always led by the screenplay."

He called his...

"Life of Pi" is a movie that has the proverbial cast of thousands… of animals, that is. In one shot set on the ocean, there are 40,000 flying fish. In another one set on a floating island, there are 60,000 meerkats. And not one of them was living and breathing, of course.

“No real meerkats were used,” senior animation supervisor Erik-Jan De Boer told the audience at an effects-themed Q&A following TheWrap’s screening of the movie at the Landmark Theatre on Monday night. “Except of course we went to meerkat sanctuaries and zoos to shoot a lot of reference footage...”

“And the two of us watched every episode of 'Meerkat Manor,'” interrupted visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer. “We were gonna watch one, but it gets addictive.”

...

"Where the Fire Burns" director Ismail Gunes is exorcizing his childhood demons.

“All my childhood was all in violence, and I am from a period where at least 10 people were murdered in Turkey a day,” Gunes said during a Q&A following a showing of the film Thursday night at L.A.’s Landmark Theatre, part of TheWrap’s Awards Screening Series. “This is my way to express myself and fight against violence."

The movie, Turkey’s Oscar entry for Best Foreign Film, is based on a real-life event that took place in the southeast part of Turkey in 2003, when a 17-year-old girl got pregnant out of wedlock. Feeling enormous shame from...