Directors
Interviews - Directors
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Five Questions for Closet Monster Writer/Director Stephen Dunn
A surreal and entirely original coming-of-age tale, Closet Monster tells the story of Oscar, a gay, cinephilic high school senior who has been grappling with the implications of his parents’ divorce — and a witnessed act of gay bashing — by, among other things, conversing with his “spirit animal”: Buffy, a pet hamster voiced by Isabella Rossellini. The feature debut of Canadian writer/director Stephen Dunn, the film has drawn comparisons to the work of countrymen David Cronenberg and Xavier Dolan, but it pulses to its own unexpectedly sincere wavelength. Below, we asked Dunn about that Cronenberg connection, star Connor Jessup […]
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To the Moon Via Stanley Kubrick: Matt Johnson on Operation Avalanche
Nothing on screen is ever fully truth. Even in the most honest and seemingly unbiased documentaries, manipulation and subjectivity reign. That caveat is accepted when there is explicit knowledge that one’s watching creative content, but blatant deceit is a much dangerous affair. In Operation Avalanche, director Matt Johnson travels in time to 1967 to ingeniously recreate and humorously speculate about some of the most divisive footage in American history, moving images that surely change the landscape of what humanity was capable of. For some, however, the moon landing is an orchestrated sham built on the artifice of moviemaking. Johnson’s sophomore […]
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TIFF 2016: Five Questions for Prevenge Director/Actor Alice Lowe
Joining Ms. 45‘s blind, black-frocked avenger and Kill Bill‘s sword-wielding, catsuited femme fatale in the pantheon of female killer films is the seven-and-a-half months pregnant Ruth in Alice Lowe’s microbudget pitch-black thriller comedy, Prevenge, receiving its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Ruth is just six weeks from delivering her first child, but she’s still grieving the death of her husband several months earlier. And she’s receiving messages from her fetus, who seems to be speaking to her… and urging her to kill. Giving Prevenge an extratextual yet inside-the-frame kick is the fact that its first-time feature […]
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TIFF 2016: Five Questions for The Headhunter’s Calling Director Mark Williams
Making his feature directing debut at the Toronto International Film Festival with The Headhunter’s Calling is producer Mark Williams. Gerard Butler plays Dane Jensen, a hard-nosed corporate headhunter whose ambition to take over his job placement company is put in conflict by a sudden family tragedy. The world of corporate headhunters is a world well known by screenwriter Bill Dubuque (The Judge), and life balance difficulties posed by a demanding profession — headhunting but, one could also say, the entertainment business — are understood by Williams too. That’s because he’s a founder and partner of Zero Gravity Management, an L.A.-based […]
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TIFF 2016: Five Questions for Strange Weather Writer/Director Katherine Dieckmann
Receiving its world premiere as a Gala Presentation at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, Katherine Dieckmann’s fourth feature, Strange Weather, a Southern road trip movie in which the landscape is both physical and psychological. Holly Hunter stars as a fifty-something academic administrator whose job is suddenly in peril due to university budget cuts. Her son committed suicide seven years ago, and when she learns that his best friend is now profiting from a restaurant concept he stole from him, she decides to hit the road and possibly settle an old score. Before the festival we asked Dieckmann to tell […]
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TIFF 2016: Five Questions for In the Radiant City Director Rachel Lambert
With In the Radiant City, I wrote in my Toronto preview, Louisville, KY native Rachel Lambert has brought to Toronto a debut film that seems like it might be the kind of laconic, unexpectedly emotional regional drama associated with filmmakers like Victor Nunez. Executive produced by Jeff Nichols, In the Radiant City follows a man, Yurley (Michael Abbott, Jr.), estranged from his family, who returns home to finally deal with the aftermath of a violent act in his family’s past. Supporting players include the always excellent Marin Ireland and Paul Sparks. Below, Lambert discusses how she connected with Nichols, why […]
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TIFF 2016: Five Questions for In Dubious Battle Director and Actor James Franco
Continuing his strike as one of the most tireless and unpredictable multi-hyphenates working in film today, James Franco brings to Toronto the North American premiere of his latest feature, an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s first novel, In Dubious Battle. A tale of labor strife amongst fruit pickers and orchard owners in 1930s California, the work mixes politics with human drama as it captures the rivalries and conflicts that arise in times of activism. In addition to directing, Franco stars alongside Vincent D’Onofrio, Robert Duvall and Selena Gomez. The screenplay is by Matt Rager, who scripted Franco’s other recent Great Novel […]
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TIFF 2016: Five Questions for Katie Says Goodbye Writer/Director Wayne Roberts
Katie Says Goodbye reps the feature directing debut of Alaska-born NYU writer/director Wayne Roberts. An alumni film of the IFP Narrative Lab, Katie Says Goodbye is described as “a cautionary tale for dreamers,” a dark drama about a young waitress striving to leave New Mexico for a new and better life in San Francisco. There’s a brutal scene at the film’s core, which we circle around in non-spoiler fashion in the below interview, in which we also discuss Roberts’ casting of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl‘s Olivia Cooke in his lead role as well as his advice to […]
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TIFF 2016: Five Questions for Girl Unbound Director Erin Heidenreich
Erin Heidenreich brings the documentary Girl Unbound to the Toronto International Film Festival as a first-time feature director, but she’s already amassed a great amount of experience in the world of independent film. She’s been a documentary producer, executive producer, second-unit director as well as an original employee of Cinetic Media, where she was involved in the sales of many of the most successful independent films of the ’00s. Girl Unbound follows squash player Maria Toorpakai as she competes internationally, representing her native Pakistan in tournaments around the world. But Girl Unbound isn’t simply a sports doc as Toorapaki hails […]
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TIFF 2016: Five Questions for Buster’s Mal Heart Writer/Director Sarah Adina Smith
“There are a lot of places people can go to find simple stories. My brain is just not one of them.” That’s writer/director Sarah Adina Smith talking about her filmmaking sensibility, which gravitates towards psychological mystery and cinematic mindbenders. She follows up her haunting, SXSW-premiering drama The Midnight Swim with Buster’s Mal Heart, a movie dealing with psychological breakdown set against the expansive natural spaces of the Montana wild. In a time-skipping narrative, Mr. Robot star Rami Malek plays an eccentric fugitive who breaks into luxury mountain homes while their owners have decamped for the winter. As we learn, he […]
