Filmmaker Videos
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Trailer Watch: Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese’s first film to world premiere at Cannes since After Hours in 1986, the trailer finally arrives for Killers of the Flower Moon shortly before it screens at the festival. Adapted from David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, the film’s script was co-penned by Scorsese and Eric Roth. The western boasts a 206-minute runtime and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Scott Shepherd and John Lithgow. The plot revolves around a series of murders in 1920s Oklahoma of the oil-rich Osage Nation and the […]
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Trailer Watch: Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama
A highlight of this year’s Sundance Film Festival and New Directors/New Films, the trailer arrives for writer-director Savanah Leaf’s debut feature Earth Mama. The film stars Oakland rapper Tia Nomore in her first acting role, playing a pregnant mother in the Bay Area with two children in foster care who she must fight to regain custody of. Earth Mama also stars Erika Alexander, fellow rapper Doechii and Euphoria season two addition Dominic Fike (who’s similarly a musician-turned-actor). In his dispatch from New Directors/New Films, Nelson Kim wrote: Earth Mama is earnest social realism of a kind that may seem familiar on […]
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Trailer Watch: Tina Satter’s Sidney Sweeney-Starring Reality
The trailer arrives today for Reality, the feature debut of writer-director Tina Satter, who was profiled in our annual 25 New Faces of Film series last year. The film stars Sydney Sweeney as the titular Reality Winner, the NSA contractor who in 2017 was accused of and arrested for leaking classified documents about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections to The Intercept. All of the dialogue in Reality is mined from the real-life transcript of her interrogation over the course of a tense afternoon. In his interview with Satter ahead of the film’s premiere at the Berlin International Film […]
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Trailer Watch: Ira Sachs’s Passages
After world premiering at Sundance earlier this year, a teaser trailer has dropped for director Ira Sachs’s Passages. Co-written by Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, the film will arrive in theaters later this summer. An official synopsis reads: After completing his latest project, filmmaker Tomas (Franz Rogowski) impulsively begins a heated love affair with a young schoolteacher, Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos). For Tomas, the novelty of being with a woman is an exciting experience that he is eager to explore despite his marriage to Martin (Ben Whishaw). But when Martin begins his own affair, the mercurial Tomas refocuses his attentions on his […]
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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 […]
