Directors
Interviews - Directors
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Scam School: Andrew Rossi on Ivory Tower
Page One: Inside the New York Times director Andrew Rossi’s damning doc Ivory Tower details how the increasingly outrageous cost of a college education — spurred by the rise of administrative salaries, lack of government support and the arms race for the best and brightest (and richest) among us — is killing the American dream and heightening the divide between the haves and have nots. Rossi’s movie isn’t covering especially new ground if you’re out in the world while reading about how it’s all falling apart. The Reagan/Friedman ideology suggesting education is a private good that ought to be paid for […]
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Five Questions for Recommended by Enrique‘s Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia
Director Rania Attieh was born in Tripoli, Lebanon, and her partner Daniel Garcia grew up in South Texas. Their first feature together, Okay, Enough, Goodbye crisscrossed Attieh’s hometown, canvassing 30 locations in 40 days to create a story, they say, that is a “love/hate relationship with the city itself.” So, after that feature won plaudits on the festival circuit — and landed the two on Filmmaker‘s 2011 25 New Faces list — it seems only appropriate that they head to Texas for their follow-up. Premiering tonight at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Recommended by Enrique is described as “a tale […]
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No Clean Getaways: Amat Escalante on Heli
It starts with a slow tilt over dead bodies traveling in space, slowly revealed to be tucked into the back of a white pick-up truck. One of them will soon be hung from a bridge, the early morning light silhouetting the dangling body: its formal sleekness notwithstanding, Heli isn’t for the faint of heart. Soon we’re introduced to a small, modest family in a remote Mexican village: a father and his two children, one of whom has a child of his own from a young wife. Surrounded by desert and not too far from the auto plant which employs many […]
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“Maybe I Hate Pity:” Nathan Silver on Uncertain Terms
Nathan Silver first courted audiences in 2012 with Exit Elena, his charming, claustrophobic take on arrested development through the eyes of a live-in aide. His follow-up, Soft in the Head, also captured an outsider’s rambunctious navigation of new environs, so it should be no surprise that Uncertain Terms, premiering this Saturday at the Los Angeles Film Festival, treads the familiar territory of interloper interrupted. Silver may be a premature embodiment of Fassbinder’s creed that “Every decent director has only one subject and finally only makes the same film over and over again,” but Uncertain Terms feels more patient in execution than its predecessors, mirroring the bucolic enclave which houses a bevy of […]
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Cannes 2014: 5 Questions for Wild Tales Director Damián Szifrón
Argentine director Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales opens with the ultimate revenge fantasy, one that unfolds into a firestorm before the credits finish. The film’s six stories get only more wicked, quickly descending into the depths of the human psyche on the verge of imploding. There is truly never a dull moment, a rarity for the Cannes lineup. A waitress gets help paying back the loan shark who drove her father to suicide. A quick road rage incident unfolds into a searing tale that will warn anyone against yelling at another driver. An explosives engineer fires back against his city’s criminal […]
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“Wait, That’s Your Dream Project?”: Michael Tully on Ping Pong Summer
Summer, 1985: Casey Kasem is on the radio and mastering the moonwalk is a must. Radford “Rad” Miracle (Marcello Conte) has to go on family vacation with his patient mom (Lea Thompson), sneeringly cool goth sister Michelle (Helena May Seabrook), and cheapskate cop dad (John Hannah), who insists on driving to Ocean City, Maryland in his police car to save money. All Rad wants to do is play ping pong, get cooler, and get the girl, but the local rich kid bullies are an impediment. Can Rad up his ping pong craft enough to beat them? And what’s up with […]
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10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Queen and Country Director John Boorman
English filmmaker John Boorman returned to Cannes this year with Queen and Country, his autobiographical sequel to Hope and Glory. At 81 years old, Boorman claims this is his very last movie, and after such an illustrious career — with films including Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, and The Emerald Forest — he ends on a very high note. In 1952, young Bill Rohan (Callum Turner) must leave his idyllic countryside home on the River Thames for two years’ Army conscription. Rather than being shipped out to fight the Chinese in the Korean War, Bill is enlisted with his friend Percy (Caleb […]
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Status Update: Livia De Paolis on Emoticon ;)
In Livia Di Paolis’ Emoticon ;), the actress-turned-first-time-writer/director plays Elena, a thirtysomething graduate student whose thesis revolves around “modern means of communication.” She’s dating Walter (Michael Christofer), a nearly AARP-eligible divorcee whose extravagant ex-wife Julia (Christine Ebersole) isn’t terribly involved with their kids. Perhaps Elena can be? Adopted teenagers Luke (Miles Chandler) and Mandy (Diane Guerrero) are closer in age to Elena than her new(ish) beau is. That doesn’t mean she’s any good at communicating with them though; they spend all their time on their computers and smart phones, staring into the electronic clouds of their devices, proving they aren’t going […]
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“Why Don’t We All Go Blow Stuff Up?” Kelly Reichardt on Night Moves
In Night Moves, Jesse Eisenberg’s baleful, twitchy intensity finds another fitting incarnation. His Josh is an environmentalist visibly dissatisfied with perceived half-measures who plans to blow up a dam as an act of eco-terrorism-/-activism with the help of ex-Marine buddy Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) and Dena (Dakota Fanning). To do this, they’ll need to purchase suspicious quantities of ammonium nitrate and buy a boat to pack it into. The middle-aged suburban guy selling his fishing vessel couldn’t be more innocuous in his personal manner, but we see his neighborhood through Josh’s angry eyes: the backyard waterfall is a clear misallocation of […]
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“I Was Too Young For Punk”: Lukas Moodysson on We Are the Best!
Back in 1998, Swedish director Lukas Moodysson’s debut Show Me Love (original title: Fucking Åmål) offered up a tender story of teenage lesbian love. His follow-up Together, which depicted a troubled commune in the late ‘70s, continued in much the same vein, but starting with his third film, Lilya 4-Ever, his work grew darker and more experimental. The change in tone really didn’t suit him. Fortunately, his latest film, We Are the Best!, is a return to form. It follows three 13-year-old girls in 1982 Stockholm as they form a punk band and try to master one song (a protest […]
