Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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“We Were Doing a Scene Without a Camera”: Five Questions for Mustang Director Deniz Gamze Ergüven
The story of five young sisters locked up by overprotective guardians with predictably dire consequences, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s first feature Mustang has prompted inevitable widespread comparisons to The Virgin Suicides. Despite the plot-level resemblance (Ergüven has said she’s both read the book and seen the movie but it’s not a meaningful influence), Mustang is its own distinctive debut, contextualized by a virulently patriarchal culture that barely disguises its controlling nature. After an afternoon frolic on the beach with male friends, five sisters arrive home to find themselves rigorously interrogated by their grandmother about what kind of sluttish hijinks they’ve been up to. In a scene resembling […]
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TIFF 2015: Five Questions for Lace Crater Director Harrison Atkins
A world premiere in the Vanguard section at TIFF, Harrison Atkins’ Lace Crater traffics at the intersection of supernatural horror and that lo-fi millennial genre proliferated by its producer, Joe Swanberg. During a weekend trip to the Hamptons with friends, Ruth (Lindsay Burdge) has an unexpected dalliance with a burlap wrapped ghost, resulting in a strange STI that no doctor can diagnose. Ahead of Lace Crater‘s TIFF premiere tonight, Filmmaker spoke to Atkins about his interest in sci-fi tinged love stories, and his collaboration with Swanberg. Filmmaker: The geography of the house in the Hamptons is central to establishing the dynamics between your characters. Did you write […]
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TIFF 2015: Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution, A Clean Sweep of Body-Horror Tropes and Imagery
I’m not sure where to start with Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution, if only because I struggling to recall another director in the time since I started keeping up with movies intensively (the last 15 years, more or less) who dropped an immensely promising debut feature, then took 11 years to deliver a follow-up. My expectations were high, met, and possibly subject to confirmation bias; still, I’m very glad she’s back. Hadžihalilović’s Innocence followed a group of young women being schooled in etiquette, beauty et al. at a vaguely sinister private institution, preparing themselves to be sexualized for a lifetime before an implicit male gaze; […]
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Respect and Integrity in 27 Days: Peter Sollett Discusses Freeheld at Bloomberg/IFP’s “Business of Entertainment” Breakfast
“Finding a way to produce this movie in 27 days was a riddle we were always solving,” recalled director Peter Sollett. “And doing it in a way that had integrity, the kind that Laurel and Stacie had, was a challenge and a mission statement.” Sollett was speaking at a Bloomberg/IFP “Business of Entertainment” breakfast, hosted by IFP board member and Bloomberg principal, Katherine Oliver, high above downtown Toronto and overlooking Lake Ontario on the eve of the world premiere of his latest feature, Freeheld, at TIFF. Oliver was introduced by IFP and Made in New York Media Center Executive Director […]
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“Humor Is Always Butting Up Against Tragedy”: Sterlin Harjo on Mekko
Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13th, Sterlin Harjo’s latest narrative feature Mekko treads territory both familiar and new to this Oklahoma-based, Native American director. An ex-con-versus-thug thriller set in the world of Tulsa’s real-life Indian homeless community, the film stars Hollywood stuntman Rod Rondeaux and boasts an all-Native cast (many of whom are part of that aforementioned homeless community). Filmmaker caught up with Harjo prior to TIFF to talk about his fourth feature – as well as German Indian-philia, Herzog’s Stroszek, and Native humor. Filmmaker: Mekko takes place in an Indian homeless community, and you use […]
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TIFF 2015 Critic’s Notebook: Leaky Members in New Work by Wim Wenders, Kazik Radwanski and More
Two movies at the Toronto International Film Festival, which kicked off Thursday, made me think back to Ben Lerner’s year-old novel 10:04. In it, there’s a conversation about a specific male performance that supposedly begins around middle school and high school-age: “You take your dick out of your pants to piss in a urinal, you start bending at the knees just a little, or otherwise making a show as if you were lifting some kind of weight.” Men performing their maleness through a leaky member shows up in Wim Wenders’s Everything Will be Fine and Kazik Radwanski’s How Heavy This […]
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“I Am Completely Oblivious to Risk When I Film”: Five Questions for The Other Side Director Roberto Minervini
Italian-born, American-based Roberto Minervini’s fourth feature The Other Side grew out of his previous film, 2013’s Stop the Pounding Heart. That hybrid documentary followed the (fictionalized) romance between Colby Trichell, a teen rodeo rider, and Sara Carlson, a young girl in a devoutly Christian family. Moving from Texas to West Monroe, Louisiana, Minervini’s new documentary starts by following Lisa, the sister of Colby’s dad Todd, and her boyfriend Mark. This is a dark story, one of drug abuse and disenfranchisement, and the second half plunges further into the backwoods, riding along with a virulently anti-Obama militia as they train and prepare to confront their perceived enemies. The […]
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Halftime Disappointment at the Venice Film Festival
In its first half, the Competition of the 72nd Venice Film Festival has been a let-down, failing to present a single truly great title. The Orizzonti and Out of Competition selections have generally proved a safer bet, and of course the excellent Venice Classics program, which so far included screenings of restored masterpieces by the likes of Fellini, Melville and Hou Hsiao-hsien, has been a reliable and most welcome morale boost whenever necessary. Following Birdman and Gravity in the last two years, the festival extended its string of star-studded, big-spectacle openers with Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest, a fictionalization of an infamous 1996 commercial […]
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IFP Announces Program for Screen Forward: IFP Conference 2015
Today, IFP (Filmmaker‘s parent organization) announced the full lineup for the annual Screen Forward: IFP Conference. Taking place this year from September 20-25 at Lincoln Center, the program consists of several different sections. Among Industry Talks, you’ll find a discussion with longtime collaborators David Wain and Michael Ian Black, whose resurrected Wet Hot American Summer has recently made a splash on Netflix, and one with Christine Vachon, the Killer Films producer whose latest project is Todd Haynes’ forthcoming, keenly anticipated Carol. Some other highlights, as noted in the press release: *“Who Needs the Boys Club?” a discussion on inequality and the misperceptions […]
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Watch: Cruise, Pacino, Travolta and More in a Red-Hued Disco Multiverse
An unintended companion piece to yesterday’s post, “Red Lighting in the Films of Martin Scorsese,” Hells Club is a blood-hued mash-up from Antonio Maria Da Silva in which a host of our favorite cinematic characters all boogie down — and draw their weapons — in the same pulsating nightclub. Writes Da Silva: There is a place or fictional characters meet. Outside of time, Outside of all logic, This place is known as HELL’S CLUB, But this club is not safe TERMINATOR VERSUS TONY MONTANA VERSUS TOM CRUISE VERSUS CARLITO BRIGANTE VERSUS BLADE VERSUS JOHN TRAVOLTA VERSUS AL PACINO VERSUS PINEAD […]
