Authors — Natalia Keogan
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Watch Now: Short Films from the 2023 Filmfort Film Festival
Filmmaker is happy to partner once again with the Filmfort Film Festival by exclusively hosting four short films from this year’s lineup, which will be available to view on our site through Sunday. The three day festival—which occurs during the Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho—highlights an array of emerging independent cinema. Alongside robust film programming, Filmfort also features DIY panels and filmmaker Q&As in the heart of the city’s downtown area. The four short films we’ve teamed up to share include an experimental documentary with music by Phillip Glass, a time-loop narrative spurred by insomnia and grief, the story […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 23, 2023 -
Trailer Watch: Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings
After premiering at Sundance earlier this year, a trailer and release date have arrived for Nicole Holofcener‘s latest, You Hurt My Feelings. The film stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who previously starred with James Gandolfini in Holofcener’s 2013 effort Enough Said) as a struggling author and instructor at the New School in Manhattan who receives unexpected negative feedback about her forthcoming book. Also starring are Tobias Menzies, Owen Teague, Michaela Watkins, Arian Moayed and Jeannie Berlin. In my review out of Sundance, I wrote: The real crux of the film’s story involves Beth overhearing her therapist husband Don (Tobias Menzies) voicing his […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 21, 2023 -
“Sometimes You Just Get Incredible Access”: Liza Mandelup on Caterpillar
David desperately wishes to change the color of his eyes. Thanks to an experimental procedure peddled by an Indian company called BrightOcular, his fantasy of physical transformation might actually manifest. Documentary filmmaker Liza Mandelup (who made our 25 New Faces of Film list in 2017) follows David on this journey in her sophomore feature Caterpillar, as he meets other BrightOcular patients in India and grapples with the not-so-subtle side effects of these implants. Unsurprisingly, many of these patients are Western people of color who’ve been overwhelmed with images of European features (which ostensibly represent the pinnacle of physical perfection) for […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 16, 2023 -
Five Questions for SXSW’s New Film & TV Festival Director Claudette Godfrey
At this year’s edition of the SXSW Film & TV Festival, two significant milestones will be achieved: the festival will celebrate its 30th iteration, and it will be programmer Claudette Godfrey’s first as the organization’s newly-minted Festival Director. She was passed the torch back in October, taking over for SXSW leader Janet Pierson, who previously occupied the position for 15 years. An Austin native, Godfrey has effectively worked from the ground up since she began at SXSW as a volunteer crew manager in 2006. During a recent interview via Zoom, Godfrey told me about the various job titles she’s amassed […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 9, 2023 -
“We Expected for Pretty Much No One To See It”: Justin Zuckerman on Yelling Fire in an Empty Theater
I first saw Justin Zuckerman’s Yelling Fire in an Empty Theater—the writer-director’s ultra-low-budget, MiniDV-shot feature debut—back in December at Williamsburg’s Spectacle Theater. I’d been invited on a whim by the film’s emerging producer Ryan Martin Brown, and I happened to be long overdue for a visit to the volunteer-run microcinema. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but was quickly charmed by Yelling Fire‘s humble yet lived-in digital aesthetic, impressively taut script and endearing ensemble of adrift, wannabe New Yorkers. Shot between November and December of 2019 and made for less than $3,000, the film feels like a strange, beautiful […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 7, 2023 -
The Overlook Film Festival Announces 2023 Lineup
Today, The Overlook Film Festival unveils the slate for its 2023 edition, to take place in New Orleans from March 30-April 2. The horror-focused festival will open with Universal’s Dracula reboot Renfield and close with Evil Dead Rise, the latest entry in the Evil Dead franchise. Additional programming includes interactive events, live performances, immersive programming and parties. Several retrospective titles have also been announced, entailing a 30th anniversary screening of Joe Dante‘s Matinee, a 10th anniversary screening of Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive, Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film The Lodger accompanied by a live score and William Castle’s The Tingler “featuring surprise […]
by Natalia Keogan on Feb 28, 2023 -
Kickstarter Launches for Filmmaker Cambria Matlow’s Narrative Short Why Dig When You Can Pluck
A Kickstarter campaign has been launched to secure funding for writer-director Cambria Matlow’s narrative short Why Dig When You Can Pluck, starring Sol Marina Crespo as a mother and filmmaker who does some soul searching on a family vacation. The Kickstarter will run from February 28 through March 23 as part of the platform’s month-long specialty program Long Story Short. Matlow’s goal is to raise $22,000 for production and distribution costs. “Why Dig When You Can Pluck is my first narrative film after years spent making documentaries and I couldn’t be more excited to share this with the filmmaking community,” […]
by Natalia Keogan on Feb 28, 2023 -
“Coming of Age Is a Lifelong Process”: Jennifer Reeder on Perpetrator
“I have no shame saying that on some level, I’ve kind of been making the same film over and over,” writer-director Jennifer Reeder tells me on a recent Zoom call. We’re speaking ahead of the Berlinale premiere of Perpetrator, the anticipated follow-up to her 2019 feature debut Knives and Skin, a horror-tinged teen noir that centers on the disappearance of a high school-aged girl and the reckoning that it brings to a Midwestern town’s inhabitants, particularly the girl’s mother and her teenage friend group. Perpetrator iterates a similar narrative trajectory, this time with a distinct genre sensibility. Precocious 17-year-old Jonny […]
by Natalia Keogan on Feb 23, 2023 -
“Someone Said I Should Be Publicly Executed”: Alex Phillips on All Jacked Up and Full of Worms
The psychedelic potency of fictional invertebrates is pure nightmare fuel in Alex Phillips’s feature debut All Jacked Up and Full of Worms. Yet worms alone don’t drive the film’s deviant characters past the brink of sanity. Rather, the creature’s hallucinogenic properties serve as unfortunate conduits for their most depraved intrusive thoughts. There’s no shortage of gross-out bodily functions and overtly taboo images on display here—milky vomit, slimy appendages, an infant sex doll which must have put Phillips or another crew member on some sort of watchlist. Yet somehow, Worms doesn’t feel like just another piece of dirtbag, edgelord cinema. It’s […]
by Natalia Keogan on Feb 17, 2023 -
“Punk Gave Me the Tools To Start Questioning Everything”: Michelle Garza Cervera on Huesera: The Bone Woman
Pre-natal anxieties and an entity from Mexican mythology are deftly and devastatingly woven together in Huesera: The Bone Woman, the feature debut from director Michelle Garza Cervera. Co-written by Garza Cervera and regular collaborator Abia Castillo, the film centers on Valeria (Natalia Solián), a young woman in Mexico City delighted to learn that she and her husband Raúl (Alfonso Dosal) are expecting their first child. This giddy sentiment is eclipsed by nerve-shredding terror when Valeria witnesses a neighbor commit suicide from her bedroom window. From that point on, she becomes the target of a strange entity with broken bones and […]
by Natalia Keogan on Feb 15, 2023
