Filmmaker Videos
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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, […]
-
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.” […]
-
Trailer Watch: Juan Pablo González’s Dos Estaciones
The trailer has been released for Juan Pablo González’s sophomore feature Dos Estaciones, a naturalistic gem that details the daily minutiae (and unusually gorgeous monotony) integral to the operations of a struggling tequila ranch. The film focuses on the ranch’s stony owner Maria (Teresa Sánchez), a pillar of her community who can’t always deliver paychecks but consistently finds the time to attend employee family gatherings. The film premiered earlier this year at Sundance, where Sánchez won the Special Jury Award Acting Prize. González was one of Fiilmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Film back in 2015, and Vadim Rizov interviewed the […]
-
Experiments in Darling Killing: Director Nastasya Popov on Respecting the Edit in Her Short, Good Grief
Recently, as part of my writing process, I’ve started to read through the junk that gets mailed to my apartment. This endless, unsolicited mound, consisting of the local councilwoman’s campaign booklet one day and “The Real Yellow Pages” the next, could contain the spark of a story. Just a few weeks ago, as I was emphatically flipping through an alumni magazine, I came across an article titled “The Secret to Creating a Masterpiece.” Of course, I was curious. Using AI to mine big data (I know exactly what that means), researchers at Northwestern had concluded that artistic genius is born […]
-
Trailer Watch: Andrew Dominik’s Ana de Armas-Starring Blonde
“Ms. Monroe, it’s time,” are the first ominous words heard in the just-released trailer for Andrew Dominik’s long-awaited Netflix production, Blonde, based on Joyce Carol Oates’s book about actor and movie star Marilyn Monroe. Ana de Armas plays Monroe in the dark drama. In addition to first glimpses of de Armas’s performance, among what’s striking about the trailer is Chayse Irvin’s cinematography, which, across scenes, instantly recalls the different period photographic styles — in cinema, paparazzi shots, and media and magazine coverage — associated with Monroe’s depiction. Interestingly, Blonde is Irvin’s second credit this year. The BlacKkKlansman DP also shot […]
-
Trailer Watch: Ti West’s Pearl
Watch the trailer for Pearl, the second film from director Ti West to be released this year. Back in March, we got the ’70s slasher throwback X, and Pearl is a prequel that charts the origin story of X‘s geriatric killer. Mia Goth, who co-wrote the screenplay with West, stars as the titular character during her young womanhood. While filming X, Goth portrayed both the film’s final girl and crazed killer. It appears she sheds the extensive prosthetics and dual performance in Pearl. The film will be released in theaters by A24 on September 16.
-
Trailer Watch: Todd Field’s TÁR
Todd Field makes his long-awaited return with TÁR, the writer/director’s third narrative feature. The film stars Cate Blanchett as the titular (though fictitious) Lydia Tár, a world-renowned composer who becomes the first female chief conductor of a major German orchestra. TÁR comes 16 years after Field’s previous film, the 2006 psychological drama Little Children, and 21 years after his 2001 debut In the Bedroom (read our interview with Field from the Fall 2001 print issue). Though both films received several Oscar nominations (including Best Picture for In the Bedroom) and overwhelming critical acclaim, none of Field’s subsequent projects have materialized until […]
-
Funding Teaser: Cutter Hodierne’s The Shepherd
Writer/director Cutter Hodierne, one of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of 2012 and the director of the short and feature Fishing without Nets, is currently fundraising for a new film, The Shepherd, a UFO thriller to be hot in the Sacred Valley of Peru. Based on a short film currently in post, and co-written with star Amiel Cayo, The Shepherd is about a rural herder searching for his missing daughter who becomes paranoid and beset with visions following a mysterious event. From the press release: The Shepherd is a sci-fi thriller set in one of the most formidable, mystical and lush landscapes on […]
