Authors — Natalia Keogan
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“What It Means to be Constantly Coming of Age”: Writer/Director Noah Schamus on Summer Solstice
Leo, a 20-something aspiring actor, is navigating a creative crisis in Summer Solstice, the feature debut from writer-director Noah Schamus. More aptly, Leo (Bobbi Salvör Menuez) is frustrated with the reductive and trite roles he is constantly up for, compounded by the reality that these seem to be the only gigs available to him as a trans actor. It appears that much-needed distraction arrives when Elenor (Marianne Rendón), his best friend from college, pays a visit to his NYC apartment on her way upstate for a house-sitting job. After convincing Leo to join her, the duo drive to the Hudson […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jun 14, 2024 -
“We Had a Real Permit For Once in Our Lives”: Joel Potrykus on His Tribeca-Premiering Vulcanizadora
Vulcanizadora, the latest film from Grand Rapids-based guerilla filmmaker Joel Potrykus, is predicated on a conceit that’s faithful to his overarching artistic interests. Two volatile buddies (Potrykus muse Joshua Burge and Potrykus himself) embark on an extended hike to a remote beach, where they plan to execute a plan fit for a Faces of Deathsequel (indeed, the film’s newly-released poster even emphasizes this parallel). While the complicated lives they’ve seemingly fled—a pending jail sentence and the crushing weight of having lost child custody—suggest warranted comeuppance, the men nevertheless retreat into childishness. They set off snake fireworks, gorge themselves on convenience […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jun 8, 2024 -
“I Was Trying to Illustrate What It Was Like to Lose My Mind”: Elizabeth Sankey on Her Tribeca-Premiering Essay Doc Witches
Witches, the sophomore feature from English filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey, poses an interesting hypothesis concerning the link between the English witch trials and maternal mental health. Sankey illustrates this correlation by utilizing filmic portrayals of sorceresses (from Häxan to The Craft) and “psychotic women” (from Rosemary’s Baby to Unsane), their historical accuracy and cultural relevance buttressed by insight from doctors, historians and those who’ve been diagnosed with postpartum mental illnesses. Sankey is perfectly poised to tackle the topic given that she spent several months in a mother and baby psychiatric unit after experiencing severe postpartum anxiety and depression that made her […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jun 7, 2024 -
“I Was a Teenage Theater Nerd”: Rachel Wolther on Her Tribeca-Premiering Feature Debut The French Italian
The New York City nightmare of giving up a rent-stabilized apartment inspires (literal) dramatic vengeance in The French Italian, writer-director Rachel Wolther’s feature debut. Long-term couple Doug (Aristotle Athari) and Valerie (Catherine Cohen) live in a gorgeous brownstone on the Upper West Side—that is, until they’ve had it with their raucous downstairs neighbors oscillating between screaming matches and belching off-key karaoke renditions of “La Bamba.” They move out after obsessively peeping and eavesdropping on their newfound enemies; their hatred drives them to Rye, New York, where they take over Doug’s parent’s house while they’re in Boca. Now forced to shuttle […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jun 6, 2024 -
“This Is a Safe Space for People Who Are Against Genocide, And Who Want to See a Liberated Future for All”: Inney Prakash Previews Prismatic Ground 2024
Returning for its fourth edition, the experimentally-focused Prismatic Ground film festival will once again host a series of screenings across several NYC theaters and via a free streaming platform. Running from May 8 through 12, the program kicks off with an appropriately urgent Opening Night screening at the Museum of the Moving Image of Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi’s Fertile Memory (1981), preceded by a reading from poet Hala Alyan and concluding with a post-film discussion between Bidoun magazine’s Tiffany Malakooti and researcher, writer and curator Adam HajYahia. “Most of my energy and attention in the last several months has been focused […]
by Natalia Keogan on May 8, 2024 -
“I Was Definitely Paying Homage to Stories Set in Chicago”: Minhal Baig on We Grown Now
Through chronicling a critical turning point for the residents of Chicago’s now-defunct Cabrini-Green public housing project, writer-director Minhal Baig’s We Grown Now explores how the reverberations of this bygone time and place continue to register today. Set in 1992 amid the real-life death of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis—who was walking to school with his mother when a stray bullet struck him—Baig’s film follows young boys Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) as they grapple with the aftermath of the tragedy. Despite the oppressive living conditions due to Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) negligence, Malik’s home life is replete with […]
by Natalia Keogan on May 1, 2024 -
“I Love the Kind of Cinema That [Tells You Everything] Through Images, Where Every Frame is Like a Painting”: Ena Sendijarević’ on Her Metrograph Series, Sweet Dreams
Amsterdam-based, Bosnian-born filmmaker Ena Sendijarević’s two features to date, Take Me Somewhere Nice and Sweet Dreams, hone the filmmaker’s personal cinematic language while expanding the parameters of her own perspective. The former, her 2019 debut feature, follows a Dutch teen as she journeys to visit her ailing Bosnian father in the hospital. The latter, which will screen at NYC’s Metrograph beginning today, chronicles the decline of a wealthy Dutch family’s Indonesian sugar plantation at the turn of the 20th century. While her first feature explores the contours of Eastern and Western European relations—a subject Sendijarević is familiar with as a […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 12, 2024 -
“We Shot for Four-and-a-Half Days”: Tynan DeLong on Dad & Step-Dad
Cringe comedy and pathos converge with unlikely grace in Dad & Step-Dad, the debut feature from director Tynan DeLong. Expanded significantly from short films that DeLong crafted with recurring collaborators Colin Burgess (recent star of Ryan Martin Brown’s debut feature Free Time) and Anthony Oberbeck, the premise of the feature is nonetheless pretty straightforward. On a weekend trip to an Airbnb in upstate New York, titular dad Jim (Burgess) and step-dad Dave (Oberbeck) quarrel incessantly, both over the affection of teenage ward Branson (played hilariously by adult Brian Fiddyment) and for inconsequential paternal bragging rights over the other. Passive aggression […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 4, 2024 -
“It’s a Confusing World That We Inhabit”: Ryan Martin Brown on Free Time
In Free Time, writer-director-producer Ryan Martin Brown’s debut feature, directionless office drone Drew (comedian Colin Burgess) decides to quit his job. After all, the position is hardly fulfilling (nor is he particularly gifted at it), and why spend all day bleary-eyed behind a screen when all that New York City has to offer exists just outside the door? Soon enough, Drew’s naive work-life musings are proven to be drivel, and his joblessness puts a mighty strain on his few remaining social relationships. His WFH roommate Rajat (Rajat Suresh) doesn’t seem thrilled with Drew’s daytime presence in the apartment, nor does […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 22, 2024 -
Forgive My Laughter: Vera Drew on The People’s Joker
The following interview with The People’s Joker writer, director and star, Vera Drew, appears in Filmmaker issue #126 and now appears online as the film receives its U.S. theatrical release from Altered Innocence. Just as The People’s Joker was preparing to premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, a “strongly worded letter” arrived that threatened immediate legal action if Vera Drew’s scrappy, bold feature debut went ahead with its multiple planned screenings. Warner Bros. was less than pleased that Drew and co-writer Bri LeRose based their film on a trademarked DC franchise, and it likely didn’t help that the […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 18, 2024
