Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: Producers and Executives Discuss “The State of Independent Films” With The Wrap
Yesterday, The Wrap presented a virtual panel comprised of “legends” (as the panelists laughingly preferred to “veterans”) in the independent film industry to discuss the current financing, production and distribution landscape—and what it might mean for rising writers, directors and producers. Moderated by producer and former agent Cassian Elwes of Elevated Films, guests on the panel include iconic indie producer and co-founder of Killer Films Christine Vachon, Blacklist founder Franklin Leonard, 30West co-president and CEO Micah Green (a company which Green describes as an “investment business focused on the independent arena”) and Rena Ronson, Partner & Head of Independent Film, […]
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Exclusive Trailer: Natalia Sinelnikova’s We Might As Well Be Dead
Filmmaker presents the exclusive trailer premiere of German filmmaker Natalia Sinelnikova’s directorial debut We Might As Well Be Dead. The film was the opening night title at the 2022 Berlinale in the festival’s German Perspective category and winner of Best Cinematography at last year’s Tribeca Festival. Hope Runs High will release We Might As Well Be Dead in New York City this month before expanding to more U.S. and Canadian cities over the summer. Originally, We Might As Well Be Dead was conceived by Sinelnikova as a thesis film to win comparisons to Yorgos Lanthimos‘s The Lobster. The film’s official synopsis […]
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Trailer Watch: Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things
Five years after The Favourite, Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos returns to collaborate with Emma Stone and a slew of other actors in Poor Things. Based on Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name, the film is scripted by Tony McNamara (who co-wrote The Favourite with Deborah Davis). Also starring are Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael, Christopher Abbott, Margaret Qualley, and Kathryn Hunter. Watch a short teaser trailer above, which arrives ahead of an early fall release date. Here’s the official synopsis of Poor Things: “From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale […]
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Trailer Watch: Abel Ferrara’s Padre Pio
Padre Pio, Abel Ferrara’s Shia LaBeouf-starring follow-up to 2021’s Zeroes and Ones, finally gets a trailer ahead of its theatrical release next month. The biopic, co-written by Ferrara and Maurizio Braucci, depicts the early life of the titular Catholic saint as he begins his ministry at a monastery in a remote Italian village that becomes rocked by political tension in the wake of WWI. The film premiered last year during the Venice Film Festival in Italy, fitting for the film’s subject matter and the director’s longtime residence in the country. Alongside LaBeouf, Padre Pio stars Cristina Chiriac, Marco Leonardi, Asia […]
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Trailer Watch: Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves
Premiering in competition at the Cannes Film Festival later this month, the trailer has dropped for Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves via distributor The Match Factory. His first film since 2017’s The Other Side of Hope, Fallen Leaves draws from the filmmaker’s established working-class trilogy, which includes his previous films Shadows in Paradise (1986), Ariel (1988) and The Match Factory Girl (1990). Per an official synopsis: “Fallen Leaves tells the story of two lonely people (Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen) who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first, only, and ultimate love […]
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Trailer Watch: Pietro Marcello’s Scarlet
Almost exactly a year after it made its world premiere as the Opening Film of the 2022 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, the trailer arrives for Italian director Pietro Marcello’s Scarlet (L’Envol). Marcello’s French-language debut follows his previous effort Martin Eden, which made waves on the festival circuit in 2020 (despite the pandemic). Kino Lorber will release Scarlet in New York theaters next month. An official synopsis reads: Shortly after World War I, veteran Raphaël (Raphaël Thiéry) returns home from the frontlines to find himself a widower, and father to an infant daughter. Raised by her father in rural Normandy, the child […]
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Trailer Watch: Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer
With summer blockbuster season drawing near, a new, three-minute long trailer for Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer has arrived. The film stars Cillian Murphy as the titular American physicist colloquially known as the “father of the atomic bomb.” Also starring are Emily Blunt, Robert Downey, Jr., Matt Damon, Rami Malek, Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Michael Angarano, Josh Hartnett and Kenneth Branagh. Watch the latest trailer above, which introduces several pivotal characters and the actors they’re portrayed by. Oppenheimer will release via Universal Pictures on July 21, the same day that Greta Gerwig’s hotly anticipated Barbie film is set to hit theaters.
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Watch: Trailer of a Movie that Will Never Exist: “Phony Wars,” by Jean-Luc Godard
I had asked myself Could I make another movie? Saint Laurent Productions has just posted a teaser “trailer of a movie that will never exist” for the late director’s Phony Wars, a new 20-minute work that will premiere at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. From the festival’s website: Jean-Luc Godard often transformed his synopses into aesthetic programs. Drôles de guerres follows in this tradition and will remain as the ultimate gesture of cinema, which he accompanies with the following text: “No longer trusting the billions of diktats of the alphabet to give back their freedom to the incessant metamorphoses and […]
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Trailer Watch: 4K Restoration of Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s Werckmeister Harmonies
A trailer has arrived for the 4K restoration of Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s 2000 film Werckmeister Harmonies from Janus Films. Based on the 1989 novel The Melancholy of Resistance by Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, the film will be re-released in New York later this month with more cities to follow. An official synopsis reads: One of the major achievements of twenty-first-century cinema thus far, Béla Tarr’s mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by the celebrated writer and frequent Tarr collaborator László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown […]
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Exclusive Clip: Laurel Parmet’s The Starling Girl
Filmmaker is happy to share an exclusive clip of writer-director Laurel Parmet’s feature debut The Starling Girl ahead of its limited release next week. In the two-minute long film excerpt, 17-year-old Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) interacts with her father Paul (Jimmi Simpson). As he leaves the room after their chat, he says, “Do not tell your mama,” exiting with an emphatic “Shh.” Jem then checks a mug he was using out of curiosity. As a teenage girl living in a Christian fundamentalist community in rural Kentucky, Jem has never felt that she truly fit in. Through an escalating bond with […]
