Filmmaker Margaret Brown’s second feature documentary, 2008’s The Order of Myths, about segregated Mardi Gras ceremonies in Mobile, Ala., is structured around a historical trauma with present-day resonance. The ancestors of Black Mardi Gras queen Stefannie Lucas were brought to Alabama on the Clotilda, the last known ship to land on U.S. shores with enslaved Africans (well after the practice had been outlawed); the white queen, Helen Meaher, was descended from the Alabama family that owned the boat. As the community and historians undertook a mission to locate the remains of the Clotilda, which they successfully found in 2019, it […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 11, 2022Nanny, the feature debut from writer-director Nikyatu Jusu, evokes a truly rebellious spirit, channeling West African folklore as a liberatory chaos agent to confront the xenophobia, racism and misogyny that regularly besets immigrants working as domestic laborers in the United States. Aisha (Anna Diop), a Senegalese woman living in New York City, is initially ecstatic when she lands a gig as a live-in nanny for a wealthy family in Manhattan. Amy (Michelle Monaghan) and Adam (Morgan Spector) appear to be well-intentioned employers, and their daughter Rose (Rose Decker) instantly connects with Aisha. However, she quickly realizes that the family’s swanky […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 11, 2022Click here to read this year’s edition of the 25 New Faces of Film.
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 11, 2022Watch the trailer for 84-year-old Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo, the director’s first film in seven years. The titular donkey is originally part of a traveling circus troupe (under the loving care of a young woman named Kasandra) before he’s shuttled off to a string of different owners. These subsequent caretakers oscillate between cruelty and tenderness, randomly determining the sweet donkey’s quality of life. Greatly influenced by Robert Bresson’s 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar, Eo premiered at Cannes earlier this year, where it tied for the Jury Prize with Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains. In his […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 6, 2022The extended trailer has arrived for Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, which stars Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet as nomadic cannibal lovers traversing Reagan’s America. The screenplay was written by David Kajganich (who previously collaborated with Guadagnino on A Bigger Splash and Suspiria) and is based on the 2015 novel of the same name by Camille DeAngelis. The film premiered at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Lion for best direction. The latest trailer reveals finer plot details, including background as to why Maren (Russell) is forced to go on the run in […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 5, 2022The American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland has announced the eight feature film projects selected for the 12th edition of the U.S. in Progress co-production forum, taking place November 9 – 11, 2022 at the festival. Invite-only work-in-progress screenings of American independent films in their final editing stages, curated from a record number of submissions, will be screened for European and Polish film professionals, festival programmers and buyers. Additionally, projects will compete for in-kind awards of post-production service pcckages. The selected projects are: Crooked Finger directed by Julia Halperin and Jason Cortlund, produced by Julia Halperin and Todd Remis Falling […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 4, 2022Today, the nonprofit Sundance Institute announced the 35 projects that will receive a total of $1,396,500 in unrestricted grant support through this year’s Sundance Institute Documentary Fund. The grantees are in various stages of production: Five in development, 15 in production, 10 in post-production and 5 actively pursuing audience engagement and social impact campaigns. The Open Society Foundations, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Gucci, the Kendeda Fund and Luminate came together to make this year’s grants possible. 2022 marks the 20th anniversary of the Documentary Film Program (DFP), and the grantees receiving funding this year prove how […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 4, 2022Filmmaker is pleased to share the trailer debut of Cinque Northern’s short film Angola Do You Hear Us? Voices From A Plantation Prison, distributed by MTV Documentary Films. The documentary follows playwright Liza Jessie Peterson’s journey to bring her one-woman show The Peculiar Patriot to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Peterson’s interest in this prison, specifically, comes from its history as a pre-Civil War plantation (originally named “Angola” after the African country that many of its enslaved inhabitants were violently taken from) before it was bought by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections in 1901. It is […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 30, 2022The trailer has arrived for Aftersun, the feature debut from Scottish writer/director (and former 25 New Faces of Film) Charlotte Wells. The film chronicles the relationship between a doting father and his pre-teen daughter, specifically through the lens of a formative vacation they took to a resort in Turkey. After premiering at this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week to much acclaim, Aftersun was selected for further festival programming at Telluride, TIFF and will now screen at the 60th New York Film Festival. The film’s official synopsis reads: At a fading vacation resort, 11-year-old Sophie treasures rare time together with her loving […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 27, 2022Independent filmmaker Nina Menkes (Queen of Diamonds, The Bloody Child, Phantom Love) returns with Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power, a documentary that uses clips from hundreds of films to demonstrate the pervasiveness of the male gaze in the dominant cinematic canon—and the real-world misogyny that Menkes believes these depictions abet. Originally conceived as a presentation that the filmmaker gave at film festivals or as stand-alone talks, the documentary takes images from films like Vertigo, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and Titane in order to make its argument. The film also features an array of prominent women and non-binary industry figures speaking to the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 26, 2022