Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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“Only Four Weeks for Prep — Including Casting — and 16 Days to Shoot the Entire Film”: Paolo Maria Pedullà on Producing Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)
Director Joel Alfonso Vargas made Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2024 on the basis of his short film, Mad Bills to Pay, which is now a debut feature selected for both the 2025 Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals. “A shoestring-budget production” realized by a “minimal team,” Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) is also a debut feature for producer Paolo Maria Pedullà, a UK National Film and Television School graduate whose previous work includes associate producing Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand of God as well as shorts and various high-end TV shows. Below, Pedullà discusses […]
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Clandestine Sexual Development in China: Making 1 Girl Infinite
One night in the summer of 2022, I received a text message from a producer to whom I had sent the script for 1 Girl Infinite, hoping she might help me make the film. Her message read: “I love the script. But I won’t be able to do it because it’s dangerous.” I was not surprised by her comment. In China, filmmakers must pass the bureau censorship to release their work. I was acutely aware of the fact that the details of my film had no chance of approval for a domestic theatrical release in China, despite it being a […]
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“In a Way This Film Asks, What is Lost by the Virtual?” Ira Sachs on his Sundance-Premiering Peter Hujar’s Day
Among the features premiering this year at the Sundance Film Festival, there are none — on paper — simpler than Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day. Arriving just two years after he premiered his Passages at the festival, Sachs reunites with actor Ben Whishaw for a picture that’s one 76-minute dialogue between two friends in a New York apartment in 1974. What’s more, that dialogue is not some dramatically sculptured theatrical two-hander building to third act epiphanies but, rather, a transcription of an actual conversation between art photographer Hujar and artist Linda Rosenkrantz, who was conducting interviews for a book in […]
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“Forgetting the Camera Was Rolling, It Hit Me”: DPs Neema Sadeghi & Nicholas Bupp on Serious People
In Serious People, a music video director hires a doppelganger to take his place at work after he learns that his wife is pregnant. The film, co-directed by Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson, is inspired by Gutierrez’s own expectant fatherhood and is a 2025 Sundance Film Festival NEXT selection. Neema Sadeghi (Noel Miller: Stop Crying) and Nicholas Bupp (Aporia, Salam) served as co-cinematographers. Below, they talk about working without a crew and contrasting a calm visual style with a mounting sense of narrative tension. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being […]
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Sundance 2025: BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, The Virgin of the Quarry Lake, Atropia
After the unscheduled drama of BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions’ abrupt removal from Sundance’s lineup, financier Participant Media’s attorney’s open letter accusing public director Kahlil Joseph of creating a secret cut as justification for said removal and the feature’s reinstatement in the lineup thanks to a new buyer, the film finally screened with the now-very-known context that somewhere in there is an extra minute not in the Participant-cleared cut. I can’t imagine where; this sprawling 113-minute essay film is all tangents and free association, to the point where it seems like you could subtract or add an infinite amount of material […]
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“Having a Crew Was Not an Option: DP Gianluca Matarrese on GEN_
Patients seeking gender-affirming care and in vitro treatments in Italy flock to Niguarda public hospital, where Dr. Maurizio Bini is considered one of the preeminent experts in the field. This is the subject of director and cinematographer Gianluca Matarrese’s film GEN_, premiering in the World Cinema: Documentary Competition at Sundance this year. Amid an increasingly hostile conservative climate, Dr. Bini and his patients navigate social stigma alongside much-needed medical intervention. Below, Matarrese discusses the decision to film most scenes from behind a book shelf, being inspired by Frederick Wiseman and relying on natural lighting. See all responses to our annual […]
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Shorenstein Center Announces Spring 2025 Cohort of Documentary Film Fellows
The Shorenstein Center announced today the Spring 2025 cohort of Documentary Film Fellows. From the press release: The group joins the Center under the auspices of the Documentary Film in the Public Interest Initiative and will spend the semester conducting research and engaging with the HKS community about the challenges facing the field and its impact on civic life. The Documentary Film in the Public Interest Initiative is designed to support new research, analysis, innovation, and provocation around core issues facing the documentary film sector. Through the Fellows’ projects, the Shorenstein Center will engage in examinations of public impact and […]
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Things I Learned About Filming Shamans While My Marriage Ended
In 2021, I was sitting in a dark room in the depths of the Andes, listening to the steady chanting of a Peruvian Shipibo shaman guiding me through a wildly personal and intense ayahuasca ceremony. I was bawling my eyes out, purging what felt like an entire lifetime of pain through my tears, the tribally-robed medicine man before me some kind of God pulling the abuses of my past up and out of my body with his song. The next day, I saw this same man eating oatmeal in Nike sweatpants and jovially WhatsApping his wife. I was disoriented: I […]
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Remembering David Lynch, 1946 – 2025
Director David Lynch, whose works plumbed the dream life of the American unconscious, revealing both joy and the deepest of horrors within, died today at the age of 78. “It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time,” his family posted on Facebook. “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and […]
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Remembering Film Independent President Josh Welsh
Josh Welsh, Film Independent’s President, died December 31, 2024 at home following a five-year battle with colon cancer. He was 62. Welsh began his association with the non-profit nearly 30 years ago, volunteering at its annual Spirit Awards in 1996 while working in L.A. as an actor. After joining the staff, Welsh worked his way up through various positions: Filmmaker Labs Coordinator, Filmmaker Labs Manager and Director of Talent Development. In the latter position, he oversaw and helped create all the organization’s talent development programs, including the Labs, Project:Involve and the Fast Track Film Financing Market. He also administered Film […]
