Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
-
“We Did These Sensual Slow-Motion Close-Up Shots with Our Actors” | Addison Heimann, Touch Me
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? There are so many memorable and important days throughout the process that I hold near and dear to my heart, but I think the wildest one was within our first week of filming. Because of the nature of our filming schedule, we had a light first week and then an extremely heavy three weeks […]
-
“A Grueling 12-hour Interview Day” | Cristina Costantini, SALLY
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? My favorite part of making SALLY was getting to know Tam O’Shaughessy, and the most memorable day of shooting was a grueling 12-hour interview day which now serves as the primary narration for our film. National heroes like Sally Ride inspire us, give us hope, and show us just how far we can go. […]
-
“People Are Willing to Show Up if You Create Something Important” | Mathias Broe, Sauna
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? The day when we shot two big party scenes for the film at two iconic Copenhagen clubs was a very memorable day for me. More than 300 people showed up to show support and attended to make the scenes feel as real and energetic as possible. Afterwards I was filled with so much pride […]
-
“More Than a Production, It Was a Communion” | Kahlil Joseph, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? We filmed in Accra, Ghana for Track 16. Reflection Eternal, which is about W.E.B Du Bois in his later years. It was late November when we arrived, and the humid air was thick with the season’s slow, deliberate pulse. We stayed through the turn of the year, marking the holidays in West Africa, far from […]
-
“Look at This Not as Reportage of an Event, But as a Metaphor”: Editor Yousef Jubeh on Khartoum
Khartoum is a poetic documentary that retraces the stories of five Sudanese refugees during the coup and outbreak of the civil war. The film, directed by Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Tomeea Mohamed Ahmed and Phil Cox, is part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition. Editor Yousef Jubeh was tasked with compiling archival material, documentary footage from Sudan and green screen studio material. Below, he talks inspiringly of Sudanese culture and history and describes a sequence in the film that, in its description, evokes Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike. See all responses to our annual Sundance […]
-
“Isaac Mizrahi in the Tub” | Douglas Keeve, Unzipped
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? Isaac Mizrahi in the tub, chatting with his mother on the phone as if the cameras weren’t there. No problem being filmed mid-soak. Nudity wasn’t a thing for him—or for me, really. When you’re around supermodels like Linda, Naomi, Kate and Cindy, modesty isn’t exactly part of the gig. Clothes came off as quickly […]
-
“The Night We Filmed the Flash Mob” | Erin Brown Thomas, Chasers
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? One of my favorite memories from production was the night we filmed the flash mob. After four long days of rehearsing and three nights of filming, we needed a boost of adrenaline, and boy did choreographer Malia Baker deliver! I remember emerging from a production meeting and walking outside to the backyard to see […]
-
Sundance 2025: Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake), Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)
Reflecting in 1983 on her early years at a literary agency, novelist Isabel Colegate ruefully recalled writing reader reports that involved ”mostly explaining in detail why the typescripts concerned were quite unpublishable, falling as they did so very far below the standards set by the world’s greatest literature, which in my ignorance of there being any other standards I was applying to them. My reports must have been deeply disheartening.” There are two tones at work here: one a rueful regret at her past self’s lack of charity, the other a reminder that if we’re not striving for greatness on […]
-
“We Broke a Cardinal Rule of Documentary Filmmaking” | Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, Middletown
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? The one day that stands out, and will forever, from the production of our film Middletown, is the summer day when we travelled upstate to meet our subject Fred Isseks, for the first time, at his home in Middletown, New York. Fred is a former high school teacher. Our documentary is about a ground-breaking […]
-
“Respect Goes a Long Way”: Producer Erin Williams-Weir on Never Get Busted
The docuseries Never Get Busted follows Barry Cooper, a decorated Texas narcotics officer who shifts his focus to exposing police misconduct and, in truly libertarian fashion, helping drug users avoid getting busted for possession. Screening as part of the Sundance’s episodic pilot showcase, Never Get Busted is also the first-time producing venture for Erin Williams-Weir. Below, Williams-Weir discusses the financial challenges she faced along the way and provides a glimpse at the series’ raw material. See all responses to our annual Sundance first-time producer interviews here. Filmmaker: How did you connect with this filmmaker and wind up producing the film? Williams-Weir: My background is in […]
