Authors — Scott Macaulay
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“One Battle After Another,” “My Father’s Shadow,” Jafar Panahi Win at 2025 Gotham Awards
International titles dominated at last night’s Gotham Awards, with films from Iran, France, the UK and Ireland, including one that was entirely Lagos-shot, winning seven of ten competitive categories. It Was Just an Accident‘s Jafar Panahi, who, it was revealed by his lawyer shortly before the event, has been sentenced in absentia to one year in prison and a two-year travel ban for engaging in “propaganda activities” against the state, was on hand to accept awards for Best Director, Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay. Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father’s Shadow, a 2025 Cannes selection and MUBI release that […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2025 -
Metrograph To Screen Filmmaker 25 New Faces Shorts on December 6
Filmmaker is very happy to be partnering on December 6, 2025 with New York’s Metrograph for an evening of shorts drawn from the magazine’s 2025 25 New Faces list. I wrote for the Metrograph’s calendar: Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces list has annually curated a cross-section of emerging and impressive new independent film talent. Directors, writers, actors, below-the-line—these are filmmakers who have made indelible work in the past year and will go on to shape tomorrow’s film culture. With the magazine’s 29th edition of the list in its current edition, the editors have curated from their work an excitingly diverse selection […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 19, 2025 -
The Gotham Announces the 2025 Gotham Award Nominees; “One Battle After Another” Tops with Six Noms
One Battle After Another, Familiar Touch and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You are among the multiple nominees for the 2025 35th edition of the Gotham Awards, announced today by The Gotham Film & Media Institute, Filmmaker‘s publisher. Among its six nominations, the Paul Thomas Anderson picture received nominations for Best Feature, Best Adapted Screenplay (from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland), and Outstanding Supporting Performance (for both Benicio Del Toro and Teyana Taylor). Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Filmmaker‘s current cover story, received nominations for Best Feature, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Outstanding Lead Performance (Rose Byrne). Sarah […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2025 -
“There’s an Opera Out On the Turnpike”: Benny Safdie on The Smashing Machine
Benny Safdie’s mixed martial arts drama The Smashing Machine, currently in theaters from A24, is brutal and tender, and both in surprising ways. Working with blockbuster actor Dwayne Johnson, who, shapeshifting into the role of fighter Mark Kerr, is even more bulked up than usual, Safdie dramatizes an early 2000s time when MMA was in a transitional phase, with its fighters touring internationally on a loosely regulated circuit where the purses weren’t so huge, there was still a camaraderie among fighters, and the rules felt a bit slippery. Drawing from John Hyams’s 2002 documentary, The Smashing Machine: The Life and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 27, 2025 -
20 Recommended Films at the 2025 New York Film Festival
With the 63rd edition of the New York Film Festival kicking off tomorrow (Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt is the Opening Night Film), we at Filmmaker offer a list of 20 recommendations, the majority films we’ve seen and reviewed out of other festivals, a list augmented with a couple of strongly anticipated titles. Find below recommendations from Vadim Rizov, Blake Williams, Natalia Keogan, Leonardo Goi, Vikram Murthi, Nicolas Rapold and Sofia Bohdanowicz, with links to their coverage. For more information and tickets, visit the NYFF site. Gavagai There are two world premieres in NYFF’s Main Slate this year. The starry inclusion […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 25, 2025 -
Watch: A Clip from NYFF Currents Selection “Bouchra”
Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki made Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2020 off their improbably delightful pandemic-set 2 Lizards, a viral web series in which the filmmakers, week by week, transposed the time’s various masking and social distancing rituals into an animal-centric parallel NYC. In our profile, Bennani teased a new work, saying, “There’s something we spontaneously found together in terms of an animation technique and a certain tone that could be developed into another project.” So, in other words, don’t call the duo’s debut feature, Bouchra, any kind of specific follow-up, even though, again, there are animals (the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 25, 2025 -
Editor’s Letter
“You buried the lede,” a colleague wrote after reading my June 20, 2025, Filmmaker email newsletter. That’s because in a missive that began by announcing our summer print edition and reminiscing about topics that have recurred many times throughout our history, I ended by announcing that after co-founding this magazine and being its editor-in-chief over its entire run, I’ll be stepping down. As I wrote, “After over three decades, and with the magazine strong and having survived so many adversities befalling print publications over the years, the timing just felt right for me to direct my creative energies in new […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 17, 2025 -
13 Films to Look Out for at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival begins today, with many of this awards season’s festival heavy-hitters (Hamnet, The Smashing Machine, Sentimental Value, Train Dreams) screening for North American audiences. As usual, though, we focus our preview on newer titles as well as a few sleepers that have premiered earlier this year. Below, find 13 films we strongly believe are worth your time at Toronto. Maddie’s Secret The opening night selection for TIFF’s Discovery program is the directorial debut from NYC comedian John Early, wherein he stars as Maddie Ralph, a dishwasher working at a trendy food content company who struggles with […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 4, 2025 -
“You Pick Up Your Tools and Go Wherever the Wind Blows You”: Charli xcx and Pete Ohs on the Toronto-Premiering “Erupcja”
When Charli xcx walked into downtown New York bar Clandestino in May, 2024, she couldn’t have predicted that by the next day she would have committed to star in an independent film — especially one with no screenplay and scheduled to shoot just three months later, right before the start of her Brat tour. But that’s what happened when a chance encounter and free-flowing conversation led the pop star, actress and now writer and producer to say yes to the Toronto-premiering Erupcja, the latest “table of bubbles” film from Pete Ohs, a filmmaker who pursues both constant motion and a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 2, 2025 -
“I Went Outside with the Idea, ‘This is My Last Day'”: Charlie Kaufman and Eva HD on Their Venice-Premiering “How to Shoot a Ghost”
Her face obscured in shadow, a woman, the poet, Eva HD, takes a photograph. Cut to words on the screen, a quote from another poet, Toni Morrison: “At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.” The paradox created by the juxtaposition of those words and that image animates How to Shoot a Ghost, Charlie Kaufman’s new Venice-premiering short film, written by HD, that sensuously and melancholically tangles with ideas around history, memory, cities and where consciousness goes when the body dies. Set in Athens, Greece, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 1, 2025
