Filmmaker Videos
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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 […]
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Watch Freedom Dreams: Black Women and the Student Debt Crisis
Watch Freedom Dreams: Black Women and the Student Debt Crisis, the latest documentary short from The Intercept. Directed by Astra Taylor and Erick Stoll—two former 25 New Faces of Film from 2006 and 2017, respectively—the doc profiles Black women who have been buried by the staggering amount of student loan debt they’ve accrued. The film is narrated by former Ohio state Senator Nina Turner, who is an advocate for cancelling student loan debt nationwide. The film points out that Black women are often forced to take out more loans compared to other demographics due to an overwhelming lack of intergenerational […]
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Watch: Behind the Editing Process of Euphoria Season 2
HBO has released a featurette on the official Euphoria YouTube channel that delves into the meticulous editing process behind the show’s second season. In a roundtable conversation with creator Sam Levinson and editors Julio C. Perez, Laura Zempel, Aaron I. Butler and Nikola Boyanov, the team recap the best scenes they cut, how they constantly re-worked narrative threads and the “intense privilege” they feel to continue working on the show together. The show follows Rue (Zendaya), a high schooler who struggles with drug addiction, and several of her equally rebellious (and oft-troubled) classmates. Euphoria feels particularly distinct due to its […]
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Trailer Watch: Jafar Panahi’s No Bears
The first trailer has arrived for acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s No Bears, which features the director starring as a version of himself. According to the official synopsis, the film follows “two parallel love stories in which the lovers struggle with hidden and unavoidable obstacles, the force of superstitions and the mechanics of power.” Along with the film’s new trailer, Celluloid Dreams has uploaded two snippets from the film to their YouTube channel: one scene that contextualizes the film’s title, and another that depicts the oft-paradoxical hurdles Panahi faces in continuing his cinematic practice. A politically defiant and visually vital filmmaker, […]
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Trailer Watch: Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil
Watch the trailer for Danish director Christian Tafdrup’s unnerving horror-satire Speak No Evil. The film follows two families who hail from different European countries (Denmark and Holland) and decide to keep in touch after meeting on an Italian vacation. A few months later, the Dutch family invites the Danes to visit their retro Holland abode for the holidays. As one can imagine, things soon begin to go horribly awry. In his dispatch out of Sundance, Filmmaker‘s Vadim Rizov wrote that “Speak No Evil gets the job done, buoyed in part by the novel cultural politics of its Western European faceoff.” […]
