Filmmaker Videos
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Trailer Watch: Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale
The first trailer has arrived for Darren Aronofsky‘s dark drama The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser in a highly-anticipated comeback role for the actor. The film had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in September before screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and London Film Festival. A24 will distribute the film stateside. Based on the 2012 play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter (who wrote the screenplay), The Whale follows a 600-pound man named Charlie (Fraser), a reclusive former English teacher who attempts to re-connect with his estranged 17-year-old daughter (Sadie Sink). Hong Chau […]
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Trailer Watch: Lorenzo Vigas’s The Box
Watch the trailer for Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas’s The Box (La caja) ahead of the film’s stateside release via Mubi. The film focuses on an adolescent boy named Hatzín (non-professional, first-time actor Hatzín Navarrete) from Mexico City, whose father’s corpse was recently discovered amid a mass grave in the country’s vast northern territory. On his way back to the capital after identifying the remains, he is shocked when he comes across a man who bears a striking resemblance to his dad. The boy quickly enmeshes himself in the man’s life—who denies any possible paternal relation—increasingly convinced that the body in […]
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Trailer Watch: Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter
One year after releasing The Souvenir: Part II, the final chapter of her meditative meta-memoir project, British filmmaker Joanna Hogg returns with her sixth feature film, The Eternal Daughter. The mysterious and captivating trailer for the forthcoming A24 title was released today. The film stars Tilda Swinton, one of Hogg’s Souvenir collaborators, who occupies an intriguing dual role as an artist and her elderly mother who spend some time visiting an old family property. Though it used to be a sprawling mansion, it now exists as a modestly-sized hotel that the duo check into for an extended stay. While the […]
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Trailer Watch: Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou’s Take Out
Sean Baker’s debut feature was 2000’s Four Letter Words, but it was his second (following his work on TV’s Greg the Bunny), Take Out, directed with Shih-Ching Tsou, that is the most clear antecedent to the neorealist-inflected work he practices today. When I interviewed Baker in 2012 about his Starlet, we began with his origin story, which included this section on Take Out: I was a bit discouraged. I was seeing these filmmakers I’d gone to school with — Todd Phillips, Marc Forster — start to make waves. Their careers were taking off. I wanted to get back to my […]
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Trailer Watch: Eileen Yaghoobian’s Skater Zombies
Director and producer Eileen Yaghoobian followed the release of her 2008 documentary about underground poster design, Died Young, Stayed Pretty, with a number of surprising projects, including Exit the Labyrinth, a short film produced with the Guardian about Berlin’s Labyrinth, and Send Me Your Sexts, an online service that creates short films out of user-submitted erotic chats. She’s now made a short — “a sports action horror film” — that is as well a pitch for a feature. Check out the teaser above, and look for the short on the Skater Zombies YouTube channel on Halloween. Yaghoobian sent the following […]
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Trailer Watch: Ukrainian Documentary Mariupol. Unlost Hope
Watch the trailer for the urgent Ukrainian documentary Mariupol. Unlost Hope ahead of its NYC screening at the Scandinavia House on Tuesday, November 1. The film utilizes audio recordings of eyewitness testimony—from two men and three women—who were living in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol when the Russians invaded on February 24, 2022. The film also features Mariupol-based journalist Nadezhda Sukhorukova, who recounts her experiences in the wake of the war directly to the camera. Of the film, Sukhorukova stated in a press release, “I want people to understand the absurdity of the situation and feel that thousands are dying […]
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Watch: Rachel Gordon and James-Michael Boyer Explain Documentary Educational Distribution
Rachel Gordon, author of the recently published and recommended The Documentary Distribution Toolkit: How to Get Out, Get Seen, and Get an Audience and James Boyer, director of operations at distributor Collective Eye Films, join D-Word founder Doug Block for this useful conversation about documentary distribution and all of its related subjects. In the talk, Boyer talks about things like needed deliverables, how his company makes acquisitions and the role of festivals in launching films, and Gordon talks about the realities of self-distribution, grassroots marketing techniques, and identifying and interacting with educational instructors who may be able to place films […]
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Trailer Watch: Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama
Watch the trailer for photographer-turned-filmmaker Alejandro Loayza Grisi‘s Utama ahead of the film’s theatrical release via Kino Lorber in New York and Los Angeles next month. The film, which won the Grand Jury Prize (World Cinema Dramatic) after screening at the this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is also Bolivia’s official Oscar submission for Best International Film. Outside of Sundance, the film has garnered wider recognition after going on to receive awards at various international festivals, among them the Grand Prize for Best Film at Transilvania, Best Ibero-American Film, Jury Prize, Best Director, and Best Original Music at Malaga and Best […]
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Trailer Watch: Andrew Bujalski’s There There
Andrew Bujalski (Support the Girls, Computer Chess, Funny Ha Ha) returns with his seventh feature film as writer/director, the pandemic-esque film There There. The film features an ensemble cast, including Jason Schwartzman, Lennie James, Lili Taylor and Molly Gordon as narratively connected yet visually isolated characters, with Bujalski filming each individual performance separately before joining actors with their scene partners in the edit. In an introduction to his interview with Bujalski after the film’s Tribeca premiere back in June, Vadim Rizov describes There There‘s narrative setup: “After a disorientingly shot-at-home sax solo from musician Jon Natchez (whose quarantine-vibes solo sets […]
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Trailer Watch: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s Something in the Dirt
After premiering at Sundance earlier this year, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead‘s Something in the Dirt now has a trailer ahead of its theatrical release. It’s the fifth feature from the filmmaking duo, who previously helmed Resolution (2012), Spring (2014), The Endless (2017) and Synchronic (2019). Like much of their filmography, Something in the Dirt features a strong sci-fi slant, this time focusing on a man named Levi (Benson) who moves into a shady no-lease apartment in the Hollywood Hills. He quickly befriends his neighbor John (Moorhead), and the two begin investigating a seemingly paranormal presence that has manifested in […]
