Queens of the Qing Dynasty, the second feature from Nova Scotia’s Ashley McKenzie, is a unique work of independently produced Canadian cinema. Both a stark about-face from the hardscrabble realism of her 2016 debut Werewolf—about a pair of strung-out young lovers living hand-to-mouth on the margins of Cape Breton—and a decisive break from the docufiction trends of art cinema at large, Queens is rigorously composed and austerely dramatized, an artful fable pitched somewhere between comedy and tragedy. Starring newcomer Sarah Walker as Star, a neurodivergent teen who develops a deep connection with her caregiver An (Ziyin Zheng, also making their […]
With the opening night of the 60th New York Film Festival upon us, Filmmaker would like to recommend 14 titles to catch during the 17-day engagement, which runs from September 30 through October 16 in-person at Film at Lincoln Center. Over the course of our previous festival coverage from this year—including Sundance, Cannes, Venice and TIFF—many of these films have been featured on our site in critical dispatches and reviews. Below, we share links and excerpts from these director interviews and festival dispatches, highlighting Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica, Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up […]
Can product placement ever transcend advertising? Pepsi’s vintage logo—a comically over-present staple of ’80s and ’90s commercial Hollywood filmmaking—is continuously conspicuous in Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s White Noise. As a period marker, this makes sense: the novel was published in 1985 and the film’s production design places it in the early ’80s. Thematically, it’s obviously relevant: DeLillo’s first-person narrator, J.A.K. Gladney (Adam Driver), regularly has his thoughts interrupted by lines that simply list corporate names or interpolate overheard advertising chatter. DeLillo originally thought of naming the book Panasonic, writing to his editor that “The word ‘panasonic,’ split into its component […]
Since the passing in January of Irwin Young, chief mensch at New York’s fabled DuArt Film Lab, there has been an outpouring of tributes and reminiscences, including a packed memorial at Lincoln Center in May. But no tribute has been more on point than “The Process: A Tribute to Robert and Irwin Young,” the Metrograph’s recent 24-film series dedicated to Irwin, the lab’s owner, and older brother, director Robert M. “Bob” Young, for the epic contributions they jointly made to the American indie film scene from the 1960s through the 1990s. For the big screen is precisely where the Young […]
It might have been notching up its 70th birthday, but rather than reminisce about the past San Sebastian continues to focus on new voices, as evidenced by a set of award winners full of up- and-coming talent. Though the festival on Spain’s northern Basque Country coast managed to continue during the pandemic, this year was the first time since 2019 that a real sense of normality resumed. That meant more guests were able to return as restrictions eased—including David Cronenberg and Juliette Binoche, both picking up life-time achievement Donostia Awards—while masks were no longer required in cinemas. Picking up his […]
While Stéphane Lafleur’s third feature, 2014’s Tu Dors Nicole, chronicled the summer malaise between of aimless Quebecois post-grads, his follow-up, Viking, explores a different, slightly otherworldly strain of existentialism. High school gym teacher David (Steven Laplante) gets the opportunity to revive his dreams of becoming an astronaut by joining a behavioral research team called the Viking Society that will mirror the first manned mission to Mars. This B-team plans to replicate the mission in a controlled environment that resembles the probe—i.e., a Quonset hut in the desert—where they will game out potential interpersonal conflicts between the five-member crew in order […]
Several years back, Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp traveled with friends to attend an out of town wedding. Opting to scrimp on lodging costs, the duo shared a crowded hotel room with four other friends. Slate just happened to be the only girl in the group, which led to her adopting a “teeny-tiny” voice to communicate her comparative petiteness to the other men in the room. The voice, a running joke for the rest of the weekend, became the eventual creative spark that would launch a web series, children’s books and feature-length film released by A24. Soon thereafter, the first […]
Unknown Wonders—a Bulgari ad (or, as the fashion house would have it, “brand film”)—was the second sponsor bumper before every public screening at this year’s TIFF. The first time I saw it, the credit “Anne Hathaway” was unsurprising enough, but being followed by one for Zendaya and “A film by Paolo Sorrentino” had a Family Guy mad libs quality. I laughed helplessly and instantly hated it, even though (or especially because) it’s a predictable commercial in which two stars vibe at a luxurious Italian villa. The assignment perfectly fits Sorrentino’s sensibility, down to a peacock entering the frame, and hence partially […]
IBC Show was back in full swing with its familiar multi-day in-person event, with more than 37,000 smiling faces eager to attend the festivities. The Amsterdam gala is like no other trade show in the industry, pinning studios, media entertainment companies, tech innovators, software providers, filmmakers and creators under one roof. You can literally have a meeting with Google or Amazon AWS in the morning, then learn about the latest offerings from Canon, Sony or Avid in the afternoon. Similar to this year’s NAB Show and Cine Gear Expo LA, the future of technology was a buzzy topic on the […]
Filmmaker is hosting four conversations next week at The Gotham’s Gotham Week Conference, all with filmmakers who have recent films we love and have covered extensively at Filmmaker. And, these talks are free to public. Three are in person at Brooklyn Navy Yards, and the fourth is on Zoom. RSVP by clicking on the links below. On Monday at 10:30 AM, I’ll be speaking with DEDZA founder Kate Gondwe, one of our 25 New Faces last year, about the distribution of Saul Williams’s and Anisia Uzeyman’s Neptune Frost, and particularly about the specialized techniques used to broaden the reach of this […]