Filmmaker Videos
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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 […]
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With Airline Sales, Watergate Film 18 1/2 Soars Into the Mile-High Club
At a time when big-budget Hollywood films have no guarantees of being seen by audiences at all, it’s gratifying that independent films can still find unique ways to connect with the public, largely by controlling their own destinies. I’m happy to say that after playing 25 festivals on four continents, touring with a 60-city theatrical release this summer and releasing on VOD in four countries, my Watergate thriller/comedy 18½ will also start “airing” this September on JetBlue Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Air New Zealand, Qatar Airways, Emirates and Singapore Airlines, among others. For the next several months, there’s a good chance […]
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Watch: New Trailer for Todd Field’s TÁR
After a 16-year hiatus from filmmaking, Todd Field is back with TÁR. A new trailer has been released ahead of the film’s forthcoming screenings at fall festivals. TÁR stars Cate Blanchett as the titular character Lydia Tár, a (fictional) world-renowned composer who becomes the first female conductor of a prestigious German orchestra. Though further plot details are sparse, Blanchett will be joined by cast members Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant and Mark Strong. In the Bedroom, Field’s first film from 2001, ranked sixth on Filmmaker‘s list of the 15 Best Debuts of the Century So Far. In 2006, he returned with […]
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Trailer Watch: Noah Baumbach’s White Noise
Netflix has released a teaser trailer for White Noise, Noah Baumbach‘s adaptation of author Don Delillo’s 1985 novel of the same name. Adam Driver plays Jack Gladney, a professor of Hitler Studies at a local liberal arts college, while Greta Gerwig plays his wife Babette. Both must confront their profound mortal fears when an “airborne toxic event” threatens their family and livelihoods—a catastrophic occurrence that reveals moments of mind-numbing mundanity. Once terrified of death, Jack becomes obsessed and consumed by it in the wake of this environmental crisis. Driver and Gerwig have collaborated with Baumbach extensively in the past, with […]
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Trailer Watch: Ana Lily Amirpour’s Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
After its premiere at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, the trailer has finally arrived for Ana Lily Amirpour‘s latest film, Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon. This will be the director’s third film after previously helming A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and The Bad Batch. The film stars Kate Hudson and Jun Jong Seo as an unlikely duo that embarks on a supernatural crime spree. Hudson plays the aptly named Bonnie, a stripper and single mother working in New Orleans. The titular Mona Lisa (Seo), on the other hand, is a fugitive who recently escaped from a mental institution. […]
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Trailer Watch: Matt Sobel’s Goodnight Mommy Remake
The trailer for Goodnight Mommy, an American remake of the Austrian film from 2014 of the same name by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, has just dropped from Prime Video. The new film is directed by Matt Sobel (a 2014 25 New Face following his first feature, the disturbing Take Me to the River) with a screenplay by Kyle Warren. The film stars Naomi Watts as a mother who is reunited with her two young sons, her face heavily bandaged after receiving plastic surgery. The children, however, begin to suspect that the woman under the bandages isn’t the same one […]
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Trailer Watch: Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection
A24 has released a trailer for The Inspection, the narrative feature debut from writer/director Elegance Bratton. However, this isn’t a total departure for the filmmaker, who previously directed the 2019 documentary Pier Kids about queer homeless youth in NYC. Similarly rooted in non-fiction, the story behind The Inspection is one taken from the Bratton’s lived experience as a gay man who enlisted in the military during the aughts. The film follows a fictional version of Bratton named Ellis French (Pose‘s Jeremy Pope), a young gay man who enlists in the Marines during the height of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell […]
