Filmmaker Videos
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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 […]
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Trailer Watch: Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Nan Goldin’s prolific career as an artist and photographer as well as her recent anti-Sackler activism is the focus of Laura Poitras’s latest documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which just released its first trailer today. The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, where it earned the Golden Lion, making it only the second documentary in the festival’s history to win the top prize after 2013’s Sacro GRA. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is Filmmaker‘s most recent Fall Issue cover story, with an interview between Poitras and critic Amy Taubin currently available for digital subscribers. Physical […]
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Trailer Watch: Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo
Watch the trailer for 84-year-old Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo, the director’s first film in seven years. The titular donkey is originally part of a traveling circus troupe (under the loving care of a young woman named Kasandra) before he’s shuttled off to a string of different owners. These subsequent caretakers oscillate between cruelty and tenderness, randomly determining the sweet donkey’s quality of life. Greatly influenced by Robert Bresson’s 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar, Eo premiered at Cannes earlier this year, where it tied for the Jury Prize with Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains. In his […]
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Trailer Watch: Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All
The extended trailer has arrived for Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, which stars Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet as nomadic cannibal lovers traversing Reagan’s America. The screenplay was written by David Kajganich (who previously collaborated with Guadagnino on A Bigger Splash and Suspiria) and is based on the 2015 novel of the same name by Camille DeAngelis. The film premiered at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Lion for best direction. The latest trailer reveals finer plot details, including background as to why Maren (Russell) is forced to go on the run in […]
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Trailer Watch: Antoine Fuqua’s Will Smith-Starring Emancipation
After much speculation over the release date of Antoine Fuqua’s Will Smith-starring Emancipation, Apple TV+ is making something of an awards season play and has dated the film for December 2 in theaters and December 9 on the streaming service. By point of comparison, last year’s Best Picture-winning Coda was released day-and-date in theaters and on the service. From the press release: Apple Original Films’ “Emancipation,” directed and executive produced by Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day,” “The Equalizer”) and starring and produced by Will Smith (“King Richard,” “The Pursuit of Happyness,” “Ali”), will premiere in theaters on December 2, 2022, and […]
