This interview with Theo Anthony about his documentary, All Light, Everywhere, was originally published alongside the film’s premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. It is being reposted today as the film premieres in theaters, including, in New York, at the IFC Center, where Anthony will do Q&As moderated by Brenda Coughlin and Sierra Pettengill. In All Light, Everywhere’s opening shot, filmmaker Theo Anthony turns the camera lens on his optic nerve, as text narration explains that we’re blind at the point where the optic nerve and retina connect—there’s a fundamental hole in our ability to view the world that, Anthony […]
One of the most impressive directing debuts I’ve seen this year is Bartlett Sher’s clear, concise and extremely moving drama Oslo, a movie that distills complex themes and conflicts into a remarkably accessible and riveting political suspense film. Adapting his own Tony Award-winning play, screenwriter J.T. Rogers tells the true story of the secret back-channel talks and unlikely friendships between a small group of Israelis, Palestinians, and a Norwegian couple acting as facilitators that led to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. The script is a model of elegant structure, weaving precise journalistic details into a sophisticated ensemble character study in […]
In a world where most episodic directors tend to specialize in hour-long dramas or half-hour comedies—and some specialize even further within those formats, becoming known for procedurals or prestige dramas or multi-cam sitcoms—Matt Shakman might be the most versatile filmmaker working in television today. He has directed one of the funniest comedies on TV (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), one of the largest scale and most popular premium cable series (Game of Thrones) and was behind some of the best episodes of Succession, Fargo and Mad Men. As comfortable with network crowd-pleasers like The Good Wife as he is at the […]
With each new film, be it fiction or documentary, Jia Zhangke reasserts his status as one of the keenest chroniclers of China’s unprecedented—and unending—transformation. His latest, Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, serves as a reminder that he is not alone on his mission. The documentary consists largely of interviews with three of China’s most important authors (plus the bereaved daughter of a fourth), whose reflections on how their artistry intersects with national history echo the social commentary resounding throughout Jia’s own work. Indeed, their words could just as well be Jia’s own, serving almost as a mission statement […]
At the Berlin International Film Festival in 2014, the German-born Anja Marquardt’s debut feature, She’s Lost Control, premiered to positive notices and went on to a healthy festival life. A fictional account of a graduate student (Brooke Bloom) doubling as a professional sex surrogate for men struggling with physical intimacy, the film represented a unique new voice on the independent film scene, ultimately netting Marquardt Film Independent Spirit Award nominations for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay. Several years removed from that film’s theatrical run, Marquardt has now taken on a project with similar themes but a much more […]
Director Kari Skogland has long been a master of tonally complex television, having helmed episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, Boardwalk Empire, The Walking Dead and many other beloved series; she also executive produced and directed several episodes of one of the best limited series of the last ten years, the Showtime Roger Ailes drama The Loudest Voice. Yet the best work of her career is her most recent, as the director of all six episodes of Marvel’s Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. An extraordinarily ambitious expansion of the Marvel universe that takes full advantage of the opportunities television […]
In the middle-aged revenge fantasy movie, the protagonist’s onslaught of violence is a reluctant one. In your John Wicks or Takens, these are men forced back into action by a transgression so grievous it demands brutal retribution. They don’t want to, but they have to. As director Ilya Naishuller points out, Nobody is an inversion of that formula. When Bob Odenkirk’s retired assassin Hutch is jarred from suburban drudgery by a home break in, he loses only a few bucks, a kitty cat bracelet and some pride. Hardly a kidnapped daughter or a murdered puppy. Hutch doesn’t have to dust off […]
Melancholia premiered in Cannes ten years ago this month and was immediately overshadowed by the infamous press conference in which its provocative Danish director, Lars Von Trier, said “I am a Nazi.” Yet, as the film rolled out across the world, its visceral and moving portrayal of depression found its way into audiences’ hearts. It stands the test of time as a rare example of a beautiful film about mental illness. The equivocation of a realistic depiction of depression in Part One as it engulfs Justine (Kirsten Dunst) on her wedding day with the science-fiction concept of the world ending […]
Terrorist or victim? That seems to be the animating question behind Alba Sotorra’s The Return: Life After ISIS. Premiering at SXSW, and selected for the Special Presentations section at this year’s virtual Hot Docs (April 29-May 9), the film is an up close and personal look at a group of Western women caught in nightmarish limbo in a detention camp in northern Syria. All left behind First World lives – in the US and Canada, the UK, Germany, and The Netherlands – with online propaganda-shaped dreams of rescuing fellow Muslims and finding shared community. And all ultimately became disillusioned and […]
Showrunner David Weil’s Amazon series Hunters was one of the most audacious pieces of television I saw in 2020, a profound meditation on morality and history articulated with the exhilarating narrative rush of a great genre film. Epic in its sweep and ambition, the show made me eager to see what Weil would do next—where does a filmmaker go after such a bold swing for the fences? The answer turned out to be Weil’s new show (also for Amazon) Solos, which operates at the other end of the spectrum in terms of scale but is just as daring in its […]