Director Interviews
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“On the Last Day We Needed That Driving Scene”: Sing J. Lee on The Accidental Getaway Driver
The Accidental Getaway Driver, courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Having amassed an impressive CV of high profile music videos and commercials with A-list talent, director Sing. J Lee makes his feature debut with The Accidental Getaway Driver, a narrative based on true events. Not the only film at Sundance this… Read more
“On Any Road of Vieques, There’s Beauty Around”: Glorimar Marrero Sánchez on La Pecera
Isel Rodríguez in La Pecera
From the 1940s until 2003, the U.S. Navy used Vieques as a bombing range and military-training site, deploying heavy metals and toxic chemicals, such as napalm and depleted uranium, that left the island contaminated. Today, Vieques has some of the… Read more
“We Opened up the Film Again and Re-imagined the Entire Scene” | Lin Alluna, Twice Colonized
Twice Colonized, courtesy of Sundance Institute
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film?… Read more
“The Storm, the Fog, the Humidity” | Christopher Murray, Sorcery
Catarina Oliveira in Sorcery, courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film?… Read more
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“It Took an Additional 14 Months of Editing” | Joe Peeler, Bad Press
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? In the fall of 2021, we were about a year into our edit and preparing to submit Bad Press to the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. We had been filming the battle for free press in the Muscogee Nation for two-and-a-half years at that point, and we felt that the story had all but wrapped up. Suddenly, about two weeks before […]
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“Two Lenses and a Monitor Did Not Survive” | Anna Hints, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? I must say that the Smoke Sauna Sisterhood journey has been a total roller-coster or as we call in Estonian “American hills.” So I am more than delighted that in the end of the journey we end up with the world premiere at Sundance in the middle of real American mountains. The first big obstacle was that my first producer […]
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“All of My Supporting Artists Were Testing Positive” | Nida Manzoor, Polite Society
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? At the beginning of the film there is a big school fight between Ria, the main character, and the school bully. I had always imagined it being set in this grand, round school library, filled with rabid teen girl spectators, creating a bloodthirsty gladiatorial image, a feeling of epic spectacle. When it came to the reality of filming, we were […]
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“Control of Women’s Sexuality Is What Makes Patriarchy Possible” | Nicole Newnham, The Disappearance of Shere Hite
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? Our first shoot on The Disappearance of Shere Hite was in the fall of 2021, when we filmed a requiem on the anniversary of Shere Hite’s cremation, held in Paris by her friend and artistic collaborator, the German fashion photographer Iris Brosch. At that time, it was of course already very clear to us that the backlash against feminism that […]
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“It’s Been a Mad Dash to the Finish Line” | Vuk Lungulov-Klotz, Mutt
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? “Miracles in real time.” I don’t know when in the production process we started saying that, but it’s kind of been our motto ever since. The biggest unforeseen obstacle for us was our lack of time. Mutt is having its world premiere only four months after wrapping principal photography. My editor and I had two weeks to put together a […]
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“We Were Forbidden to Film in the Archive” | Roman Liubyi, Iron Butterflies
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? COVID, and, after that, the expansion of Russian aggression against Ukraine, were pretty strong obstacles. It is a paradox, but we have never felt broken. I remember an expression that art is the material of resistance. This whole project is a search for creative solutions and remaining possibilities against these obstacles. An example is the scene that we shot in […]
