Directors
Interviews - Directors
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Dukhtar Writer, Director, Producer, Editor Afia Nathaniel at the Munich International Film Festival
Released in Pakistan and set to open in New York and L.A. later this fall, Dukhtar tells the story of a mother and her ten-year-old daughter who flee from their home in the mountains of Pakistan. Below, first-time feature filmmaker, writer, co-producer and co-editor Afia Nathaniel speaks with me after the German premiere in Munich. Filmmaker: Did you always want to be a filmmaker? Nathaniel: I’m originally from a big city in Pakistan called Lahore, where I grew up and was educated. We didn’t have any film schools or film industry, but I always loved writing and storytelling. I never […]
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Meet Me in Montenegro at the Munich Film Festival
Meet Me in Montenegro is a romantic comedy about two lovers, a Norwegian dancer and an American filmmaker, who meet by chance during a visit to Berlin. The film is based on the real-life romance between co-writers, producers, and editors Linnea Saasen and Alex Holdridge, who both also star in the film as the fictional portrayals of their real-life characters. On the eve of the German premiere in Munich, I sat down with Saasen, her co-producer Ineke Hagedorn, and co-actress Jenny Ulrich. The Orchard has recently released the film in the U.S. and Canada, and it’s also available on digital […]
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Standing on Opposite Sides of the Road: Pedro Costa on Horse Money
Locating himself far from the mainstream of even international art cinema, Pedro Costa is widely regarded as one of the most important artists on the international film scene. Born in 1959, he was already a successful filmmaker when he began to feel, on the set of his third feature Ossos (1997), that something was wrong with the normal way of making films: “We should rethink all of it,” he thought. Jettisoning his professional crew, he made In Vanda’s Room (2000), shot by a one-person crew on a consumer mini-DV camera in Lisbon’s Fountainhas ghetto over the course a year. A […]
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The Anxiety of Influence: Director James Ponsoldt on The End of the Tour
“Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking?” – David Foster Wallace The new tagline for the James Ponsoldt movie The End of the Tour is, “Imagine the greatest conversation you’ve ever had.” I initially took issue with this tagline. Ponsoldt’s film is based on a book arranged around a transcript of an unpublished interview […]
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6 Years Writer/Director Hannah Fidell at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival
Following up her debut feature, A Teacher, Hannah Fidell premiered 6 Years at SXSW before traveling with it last month to the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. A relationship tale about two twenty-somethings navigating the complications of post-collegiate life, the film stars Taissa Farming and Ben Rosenfield. Filmmaker caught up with Fidell in Paris to learn about working without a script, returning to Austin for production and how film theory has affected her filmmaking. 6 Years will be released later this year by Netflix. Filmmaker: 6 Years is the second film in your Texas trilogy. Because the movie was improvised, did you ever […]
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The Road Within Director Gren Wells at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival
Recently released by WellGo USA, The Road Within is the directorial debut of screenwriter and actress Gren Wells (A Little Bit of Heaven). Starring Robert Sheehan, Dev Patel and Zoe Kravitz, the film tells the story of three escapees from a psych ward (Tourette Syndrome, OCD and anorexia sufferers, respectively) on a transformative road trip. It won the Audience Award at the Champs-Élysées and is currently available in the States on digital platforms. Filmmaker: How do you think your next film will be different than your first? Wells: I think you start to define who you are with the second […]
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“We Lost U2. What About Ennio Morricone?”: Phil Joanou on State of Grace, Making Heaven’s Prisoners and Working for Blumhouse
In September 1990, the American cinema changed forever when Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas exploded onto the country’s multiplex screens. I’ve written elsewhere about that film’s influence and impact, which was so massive that its unfortunate side effect was to eclipse several other excellent mob films that were released at the same time. Indeed, the period was a remarkable one for terrific gangster movies – Miller’s Crossing, King of New York, Men of Respect, and The Godfather, Part III all premiered in the fall of 1990. To varying degrees time has been kind to all of these films, but none has aged […]
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“We Didn’t Fictionalize Much”: Sean Baker on Tangerine
Shot on three iPhones 5s’s with a pair of unknown actresses as leads, Sean Baker’s Tangerine was a hazardous proposition, but the finished product justifies every ounce of risk involved in the production, showing just how far the crew could stretch a minuscule budget. Shot on and around real Los Angeles streets and shops, the film keeps pace with transgender sex workers Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) as they zigzag around the city on Christmas Eve on dual missions. Sin-Dee’s embarking on a “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” revenge mission against her two-timing boyfriend […]
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“We’d Revert Back to the Idea of a Cauliflower”: Debra Granik on Stray Dog
Much more than a companion piece to her Oscar-nominated feature Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik’s Stray Dog sets its sights on a peaceful and welcoming side of Missouri rarely seen in American cinema. Ron “Stray Dog” Hall, a Missouri-bred Vietnam vet and biker, goes above and beyond to help both those in his RV park community and fellow veterans suffering from PTSD. It’s rare to see a film that focuses both on the goodness of the human spirit and the painful, lifelong regrets that it may hold, but Granik allows the layers of the narrative to unfold with a nonjudgmental eye. […]
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Queer Film Pioneer Monika Treut on Of Girls and Horses
A legend in lesbian cinema, Monika Treut has been making films for 30 years, starting with her 1985 narrative feature Seduction: The Cruel Woman (featuring Udo Kier – not bad for a debut film), and right through to this year’s Of Girls and Horses, a poetic coming-of-age tale that also serves as a celebration of nature’s transformational power. Along the way Treut has also explored the nonfiction realm, turning her lens on everything from gender identity (1999’s Gendernauts) to Taiwanese food (2012’s The Raw and the Cooked). Filmmaker was fortunate enough to catch up with the Hyena Films co-founder (along […]
