CHRISTOPHER MINTZ-PLASSE, JONAH HILL AND MICHAEL CERA IN GREG MOTTOLA’S SUPERBAD. COURTESY COLUMBIA PICTURES. It’s a sign of Hollywood’s wrongheadedness that it’s been a decade since Greg Mottola last made a movie. In 1996, Mottola arrived on the scene with his debut, The Daytrippers, a funny and poignant indie that recalled the classy Hollywood comedies of the ’60s and ’70s. Though the film led to Mottola becoming friends with Woody Allen — unquestionably an influence on Daytrippers — his next two projects failed to come to fruition, so he turned his focus to television. Mottola’s work in TV has been […]

JULIE DELPY AND ADAM GOLDBERG IN 2 DAYS IN PARIS. COURTESY SAMUEL GOLDWYN FILMS. It is difficult to write about Julie Delpy’s career without rhapsodizing about the multi-talented Frenchwoman. At just 14, she got her breakthrough in Jean-Luc Godard’s Detective, and while still in her teens she worked with such celebrated European auteurs as Leos Carax, Bertrand Tavernier, Carlos Saura, Agnieszka Holland and Volker Schlöndorff. In the early 1990s, Delpy established herself as one of the most promising actresses around with her work in both arthouse successes (Krysztof Kie?lowski’s White and Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise) and more commercial fare like […]

NINA KERVEL-BEY IN JULIE GAVRAS’ BLAME IT ON FIDEL. COURTESY KOCH LORBER FILMS. Anyone wanting to prove that a there is a “cinematic gene” need look no further than Julie Gavras. The daughter of legendary director Costa-Gavras, most famous for films like Z (1968) and Missing (1982), and movie producer Michèle Ray-Gavras, Gavras initially resisted working in film and enrolled in law school. However, her desire to tell stories on film proved irrepressible. After a stint as an assistant director in France and Italy, Gavras started making documentaries, most notably The Pirate, the Wizard, the Thief and the Children (2002). […]

DAVID ROSS AND PATRICIA DOUGLAS IN DAVID STENN’S GIRL 27. COURTESY RED ENVELOPE ENTERTAINMENT. In most people’s eyes, David Stenn’s first film as a director marks the start of his third career, but to him it’s a continuation of what he’s been doing all along: storytelling. Chicago native Stenn started writing for Hill Street Blues after graduating from Harvard, then moved on to more TV writing, most notably on teen guilty pleasures 21 Jump Street and Beverly Hills 90210. In 1988, he published an acclaimed biography of 1920s film icon Clara Bow, and followed it in 1993 with an exhaustive […]

NATALIE PORTMAN AND JAVIER BARDEM IN MILOS FORMAN’S GOYA’S GHOSTS. COURTESY SAMUEL GOLDWYN FILMS. It is something of a tragic irony that after escaping the restrictions of Communist Czechoslovakia in 1968 — where he had made five films in five years — in the subsequent 40 years Milos Forman has worked in America, he has only made a further nine features. Taking Off (1971) was a transition between the looseness of his Czech films, such as the classic Loves of a Blonde (1965) and The Firemen’s Ball (1967), and the more conventional Hollywood style he would later adopt, and was […]

DIANA GARCIA IN GERARDO NARANJO’S DRAMA/MEX. COURTESY IFC FIRST TAKE. Not many people can genuinely claim that cinema is their savior, but Gerardo Naranjo is probably one of the few. Growing up in the small Mexican town of Salamanca, he frequently got into trouble and was forced to move from school to school as a result of his problems with authority, but managed to escape his difficulties while watching movies. He ended up studying at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, where he founded a cinema club called Zero for Conduct, — named after the Jean Vigo movie, a favorite […]

BRENDA BLETHYN AND KHAN CHITTENDEN IN CHERIE NOWLAN’S INTRODUCING THE DWIGHTS. COURTESY WARNER INDEPENDENT PICTURES. Australian director Cherie Nowlan grew up in the small town of Singleton, New South Wales, and segued from a brief career as a journalist to working her way up the ladder in television and film. Her first film, God’s Girls (1991), about the nuns who taught her in high school, won the Best Documentary prize at the Australian Film Institute Awards, and prompted her to go to film school to study screenwriting. After making the short Lucinda 31 (1995), Nowlan directed her first feature, romantic […]

2PAC AND HIS SOLDIERS IN ASGER LETH’S GHOSTS OF CITÉ SOLEIL. COURTESY THINKFILM. Asger Leth grew up with film as a way of life. His father, Danish film giant Jørgen Leth, featured him in Life in Denmark (1971) before young Asger could even walk or talk, and he also appeared in two more of his father’s documentaries, Good and Evil (1975) and Moments of Play (1986). Keen to escape his father’s shadow, Leth initially considered a career as a lawyer but ultimately could not resist the lure of filmmaking. He started directing short films in the mid-1990s, while simultaneously working […]

BEN KINGSLEY AND TÉA LEONI IN JOHN DAHL’S YOU KILL ME. COURTESY IFC FILMS. John Dahl has unquestionable cinematic flair and a genuine talent for telling unconventional stories, yet he never set out to be a film director. Growing up in Montana in the 60s and 70s, his great passions were art and music: he studied fine art in college, then dropped out to become a commercial artist and play in rock ‘n’ roll bands. Still uncertain of his place in the world, he ended up at film school where he focused on directing. After graduation, he worked as an […]

JEMAINE CLEMENT AND LOREN HORSLEY IN TAIKA WAITITI’S EAGLE VS SHARK. COURTESY MIRAMAX FILMS. To describe Taika Waititi as simply a filmmaker would be to do him a disservice. Just watching him as he talks – fiddling with anything and everything within reach, getting up and walking around the room, constantly active – it’s apparent that his inherent energy and enthusiasm make it impossible for him to focus on just one thing. He first rose to prominence in his native New Zealand as part of the comedy duo Humourbeast (along with Eagle vs Shark‘s leading man, Jemaine Clement), and was […]