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25 Years After the “Battle of Seattle,” The Same Tactics Are Seen in LA
WTO/99
We’re the filmmaking team behind the new documentary, WTO/99, a film that examines—purely through archival footage—four days of protests in Seattle during 1999 against the World Trade Organization (WTO). We’ve spent over two years living in the footage of the largest US demonstrations since the Vietnam War captured by protesters on the ground, the Seattle Police Department and local and national new crews. We’ve reviewed roughly one thousand hours of footage that followed protesters, police and governmental officials as they participated in what would later become known as the “Battle of Seattle”—the week in 1999 when over 40,000 people took to the streets to shut down the conference for the newly established WTO, who had gathered on American soil for… Read more
“It was Physicalizing the Words That Became the Goal”: Erik Jensen, Back To One, Episode 349
Erik Jensen is a multipyphenate who, along with his wife and creative partner Jessica Blank have been called “the foremost practitioners of documentary theater in the U.S.” Their genre-defining plays The Exonerated, Aftermath, Coal Country, and The Line were all critically acclaimed. As an actor, Jensen’s credits include The Walking Dead, Mindhunter, Mr. Robot, The Americans, not to mention his praised portrayal of legendary NY Yankee Thurman Munson in The Bronx is Burning. On this episode he details his approach toward playing that beloved figure, and finding out that “almost the entire body of that character was an emotional word-gesture.” He talks about learning how much psychology is in people’s words, his process of having multiple “wants” for a character… Read more
Cinema without Adjectives: Rita Azevedo Gomes on Fuck the Polis
Fuck the Polis
In Rita Azevedo Gomes' cinematic universe, a characteristic blend of literary adaptation and cinematic innovation creates simultaneously concrete and oneiric landscapes—places where the wandering subject, camera, plot and spectator become absorbed by the unknown, yet strangely familiar, territory before them. With Fuck the Polis, her most bold and daring film to date, the Portuguese filmmaker continues her cinematographic explorations of word, image, time and human emotions. Making its world premiere at FIDMarseille 2025, Polis follows Irma, who around twenty years ago, believing herself condemned, traveled to Greece. She now retraces that journey, moving from island to island in what becomes both a physical and metaphysical odyssey through urban dreamscapes where western history and culture engages in a complex dialogue with literature… Read more
“I Had Never Filmed Near the Front Before”: Dmytro Hreshko on Karlovy Vary-Premiering Ukrainian War Documentary Divia
Divia
At a time when observation remains the dominant approach among contemporary Ukrainian documentarians and it feels as though every subject suited to a distanced gaze has already been explored, in Divia Dmytro Hreshko approaches nature during wartime with radical, dialogue-free minimalism. Originally from Uzhhorod, a city on the Slovakian border, Hreshko has celebrated Ukraine’s landscape in previous documentaries such as Snow Leopards of the Carpathians (2019) or Mountains and Heaven in Between (2022). With his signature admiration for picturesque scenery—captured through drone and sustained by extra-long shots with deep focus—Divia is a harmonious continuation of his career as both director and DP while marking his first overt declaration of love for the nature of his country. Named after the Slavic goddess… Read more
“A Lot of Movies Right Now are Just Shrugs”: Frederic Da on iPhone-Shot Found Footage film Isaiah’s Phone
Isaiah's Phone
With Isaiah’s Phone, French-American filmmaker Frederic Da caps off an informal trilogy cataloging the contemporary teenage experience by corralling his film students at a private high school in Santa Monica as crew and on-camera as actors. Short “Ava Dates a Senior” was expanded into the ensemble feature Teenage Emotions—both of which are lensed on multiple iPhones and had their premieres at Slamdance. Da’s latest, Isaiah’s Phone, employs a diegetic, found footage framing device, following a young student Isaiah (Isaiah Brody) as he navigates the difficulties of high school. On-screen text up top teases “a horrific act of violence,” explaining that what you’re viewing is a camera roll of a student “seized by police as evidence.” Da loves movies like Teorema, in… Read more
“Everybody Involved in This Was a Total Loser”: Alex Ross Perry on His Exhaustive Essay Doc Videoheaven
Maya Hawke narrating Videoheaven
Part eulogy for a bygone commercial space, part rigorous investigation of its origins and subsequent representation in popular culture, Alex Ross Perry’s Videoheaven leaves virtually no stone unturned during its nearly three hour runtime. Composed entirely of clips that take place in or otherwise center video stores—from Body Double to Seinfeld to Stranger Things—the essayistic documentary features droll narration from Maya Hawke (who stars in the latter) waxing poetic about their rise and fall, both physically and on screen, in six chapters. The role of pornography, corporate chains and the front-facing employees within these spaces is exhaustively charted; notably, Perry worked at a location of exalted Manhattan retailer Kim’s Video as a young adult, making it no surprise that the… Read more
Order of Operations: Wes Anderson on The Phoenician Scheme
Mia Threapleton and Benicio Del Toro in The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson has retroactively described the over-schedule and over-budget making of his fourth feature, 2004’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, as the kind of production that would never be allowed to happen now. That’s partly because of shifting Hollywood windows of financing possibility, but that’s likely also in part because the writer-director wouldn’t let it happen again. On 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson made sure to work in a more sustainable and flexible way. As Jason Schwartzman told Richard Brody in 2009, “Wes not only pitched a rough idea for a movie, he also pitched a rough idea of how he’d like to make the movie, which was ‘I want to do a movie with no trailers; all the… Read more
“Right-Size Yourself”: Bonnie Rose, Back To One, Episode 348
Bonnie Rose started her professional career as a stand-in for Bette Midler on First Wives Club. Next up, the iconic and legendary film director Sidney Lumet hand picked her for the feature film Night Falls On Manhattan, playing a New York City cop opposite Andy Garcia, which led to many other Lumet projects over the next decade including a recurring role as a legal aid attorney on the TV legal drama 100 Centre St. Bonnie’s massive credits in television and film include Inside Llewyn Davis, Marvel's Jessica Jones, Mr. Robot, Blue Bloods, Broad City, The Sopranos, and the trifecta of all Law & Orders. She recently won Best Actress at three different film festivals for her role in Finise Avery’s short film Living with Grandma. She also appears opposite Rose Byrne in Stephanie… Read more
