Filmmaker Videos
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Trailer Debut: Cinque Northern’s Angola Do You Hear Us? Voices From A Plantation Prison
Filmmaker is pleased to share the trailer debut of Cinque Northern’s short film Angola Do You Hear Us? Voices From A Plantation Prison, distributed by MTV Documentary Films. The documentary follows playwright Liza Jessie Peterson’s journey to bring her one-woman show The Peculiar Patriot to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Peterson’s interest in this prison, specifically, comes from its history as a pre-Civil War plantation (originally named “Angola” after the African country that many of its enslaved inhabitants were violently taken from) before it was bought by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections in 1901. It is […]
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Trailer Watch: Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun
The trailer has arrived for Aftersun, the feature debut from Scottish writer/director (and former 25 New Faces of Film) Charlotte Wells. The film chronicles the relationship between a doting father and his pre-teen daughter, specifically through the lens of a formative vacation they took to a resort in Turkey. After premiering at this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week to much acclaim, Aftersun was selected for further festival programming at Telluride, TIFF and will now screen at the 60th New York Film Festival. The film’s official synopsis reads: At a fading vacation resort, 11-year-old Sophie treasures rare time together with her loving […]
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Trailer Watch: Nina Menkes’s Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
Independent filmmaker Nina Menkes (Queen of Diamonds, The Bloody Child, Phantom Love) returns with Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power, a documentary that uses clips from hundreds of films to demonstrate the pervasiveness of the male gaze in the dominant cinematic canon—and the real-world misogyny that Menkes believes these depictions abet. Originally conceived as a presentation that the filmmaker gave at film festivals or as stand-alone talks, the documentary takes images from films like Vertigo, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and Titane in order to make its argument. The film also features an array of prominent women and non-binary industry figures speaking to the […]
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Trailer Watch: Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave
South Korean director Park Chan-wook returns six years after The Handmaiden with Decision to Leave, a romantic thriller that won him the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. A new trailer has been released ahead of the film’s forthcoming screening at the New York Film Festival. Thought plot details are best kept sparse, the trailer hints at palpable chemistry between a detective and a recently-widowed woman. When investigating the death of a man who has fallen off of a mountain, said detective (Park Hae-Il) decides to question the deceased’s “young, beautiful and foreign” wife (Tang […]
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Trailer Watch: Damien Chazelle’s Babylon
The uncensored trailer has arrived for Damien Chazelle‘s fifth feature, the Hollywood Jazz Age epic Babylon. Charting the transition from silent films to “talkies,” the film follows several characters who experience a dramatic rise and fall during this era of unbridled excess and hedonism. Babylon boasts an enormous ensemble cast, starring Diego Calva, Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt and featuring Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, Jean Smart, Tobey Maguire, P.J. Byrne, Lukas Haas, Ethan Suplee, Olivia Hamilton, Jeff Garlin, Max Minghella, Eric Roberts, Rory Scovel, Katherine Waterstone, Flea, Olivia Wilde and Samara Weaving. Paramount Pictures will release Babylon in select theaters […]
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“Cops and Prosecutors Truly Work the Same Side”: Ingrid Raphaël and Melissa Gira Grant on Their FOV Doc They Won’t Call It Murder
When 16-year-old Julius Tate, Jr. was killed during a SWAT raid by undercover Columbus police officers in December of 2018, citizens swiftly gathered to protest the unjust killing of a child. One year later, during an anniversary vigil mourning Tate’s loss, Ingrid Raphaël, co-creator of No Evil Eye and Film Futura, and Melissa Gira Grant, a New York-based reporter covering police brutality, came together to co-direct and collaborate on They Won’t Call It Murder, a documentary short from Field of Vision that captures the enduring grief and activism that surviving families of police violence undertake. The film, embedded above, makes […]
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Trailer Watch: Lukas Dhont’s Close
A24 has released a trailer for Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s second feature, the melancholy coming of age story Close. The film won the Grand Prix (shared with Claire Denis‘s Stars at Noon) at Cannes, four years after Dhont’s debut feature Girl won the Caméra d’Or and Queer Palm in 2018. Close follows two 13-year-old best friends, Léo and Rémi (Eden Dambrine and Gustav de Waele) who spent an idyllic summer strengthening their unique bond. When they arrive back at school, however, the two are harassed by classmates over the nature of their relationship. Embarrassed by these insults and accusations, Léo […]
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Trailer Watch: James Gray’s Armageddon Time
The first trailer has arrived for James Gray’s Armageddon Time, the 1980-set film that’s loosely based on the director’s own experience growing up Jewish in Flushing, Queens. After premiering at Cannes earlier this year and screening at Telluride and the NYFF, the film will hit U.S. theaters via Focus Features on October 28. Armageddon Time follows 12-year-old Paul Graff (Banks Repeta, Gray’s young avatar), who forms a budding friendship with a Black peer named Johnny (Jaylin Webb). When the two are caught toking in their public school’s bathroom, Paul is immediately enrolled in a private (and almost entirely white) school by […]
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Trailer Watch: Martine Syms’s The African Desperate
MUBI has released a new trailer for The African Desperate, the feature debut from acclaimed visual artist Martine Syms. Filmmaker previously interviewed Syms during the film’s premiere at this year’s edition of New Directors/New Films as well as for our most recent Summer print issue. The African Desperate follows Palace Bryant (Sym’s frequent collaborator Diamond Stingily) on her final day at an MFA program in New York’s Hudson Valley. During these last 24 hours of art school, Palace experiences the full gamut of grad school woes and (synthetic) wonders—including a racist final thesis review, encounters with her insufferable classmates and […]
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Trailer Watch: Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny
The official trailer has arrived for writer/director Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny, which is set to hit theaters this fall before heading exclusively to Amazon Prime Video. Jusu, a former 25 New Faces of Film, makes her feature debut with Nanny. The film premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, where it picked up the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize—the first time the award has been granted to a horror film, and only the second time it has gone to a feature directed by a Black woman. Nanny follows Aisha (Anna Diop), a Senegalese woman who is hired as a domestic […]
