Directors
Interviews - Directors
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Five Questions for The Editor Writer/Directors Matthew Kennedy and Adam Brooks
With the recent Berberian Sound Studio and now The Editor, we’re in a bit of a giallo revival. Or, more accurately, the gory, gloriously art decorated Italian horror thrillers of the 1970s have inspired a new generation to pay homage in the form of their own meta-commentaries. Interestingly, Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio and this year’s Toronto-premiering The Editor both feature post-production crew as their protagonists. In Berberian Sound Studio, it was a foley artist; in The Editor, Matthew Kennedy and Adam Brooks’ horror comedy, our hero is a once-vaunted picture editor who, following an accident, now must wield his […]
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Five Questions for Merchants of Doubt Director Robert Kenner
It’s hard to think of a documentary that was more effective in getting viewers to at least think about altering their behavior than Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc. If you walked out and didn’t change your grocery-shopping habits or scan a food label, then you must have fallen asleep during the movie. But Kenner’s follow-up, Merchants of Doubt, would seem to face a challenge in the “call to action” department. Here, Kenner deals with climate change, an urgent issue that requires not simply single actions but massive social and economic change to conquer. Climate change, however, is the film’s broad focus. […]
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Five Questions for Still Alice Writer/Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland
In Still Alice, based on Lisa Genova’s novel, Julianne Moore plays a Columbia University linguistics professor with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, a diagnosis that threatens to erode her relationship with her family as well as the city she has long called her home. With a supporting cast including Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart and Kate Bosworth, Still Alice promises a realistic depiction of the disease by one of America’s finest actresses, and it’s a return to character-based human dramas by the directorial duo of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, whose films include The Last of Robin Hood, the Sundance Grand Prize-winning Quinceañera […]
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Five Questions for Adult Beginners Director Ross Katz
Five years after transitioning from producer to director with the HBO veteran drama, Taking Chances, Ross Katz returns to the director’s chair with a comedy about going home. Nick Kroll plays a young entrepreneur whose product launch has flamed out, who has burned through his investors’ dough, and who has lost his girlfriend. He returns home to work as a nanny for his sister’s young child in what is described as a movie about beginning again. Adult Beginners world premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday, September 8. Filmmaker: After having written and produced your directorial debut, you’re […]
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Five Questions for 99 Homes Writer/Director Ramin Bahrani
Based on its stellar reviews out of Venice and Telluride, Ramin Bahrani’s “eviction stunner” 99 Homes infuses the sad and infuriating tale of America’s real estate bust with visceral, gut-punching drama. Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon star as the down-and-out construction worker and shady realtor who come up with a get-rich scheme involving, of course, the exploitation of those even less fortunate. Screening Monday, September 8 at the Toronto International Film Festival, 99 Homes is already picking up Oscar buzz. Below, we ask Bahrani about researching real estate, name actors and the decline of Western civilization. Filmmaker: What attracted you […]
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Five Questions for Pawn Sacrifice Director Ed Zwick
The “Match of the Century” — the 1972 chess tournament between American master Bobby Fischer and Russian star Boris Spassky — is brought to life in Pawn Sacrifice, the latest drama from director Ed Zwick (The Last Samurai, Legends of the Fall). Detailing not just the history of the event but the emotions, psychologies and even paranoias of its principal players, the film casts two great actors — Tobey Maguire and Liev Schreiber — in a picture not just about the sport of chess but also the Cold War rivalries of the time. Indeed, Pawn Sacrifice premieres at a time […]
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Five Questions for The Reach Director Jean-Baptiste Leonetti
After screening his debut feature, Carre Blanc, at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011, French director Jean-Baptiste Leonetti returns to the festival to world premiere his latest, The Reach. Described as a cat-and-mouse thriller about a corporate shark and the young guide he hires for a hunting trip across the Mojave desert, it stars Michael Douglas, whose capacity for embodying and, through his performances, critiquing American greed is unquestioned. Below we ask Leonetti about Douglas, maintaining tension in a two-hander, and the differences between French filmmaking and American. Filmmaker: In both this film as well as Carre Blanc, class […]
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Five Questions for Spring Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
“Before Sunrise with a supernatural twist” is how Toronto programmer Colin Geddes preps us for Spring, the second co-directed feature by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. In their earlier Resolution, the two explored themes of friendship and substance abuse within a twisty, ironic horror narrative. Here, as Geddes indicates, they decamp for abroad, settling their film in Italy where a young American traveler (Lou Pucci) falls for a beautiful German woman (Nadia Hilker). A (“terror”) romance follows. Below, we talk to the two directors about shooting abroad and trying to stay original when working within the horror genre. Spring has […]
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Five Questions for The Yes Men Are Revolting Director Laura Nix
Five years after political superheroes the Yes Men (Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano) made everything all right in The Yes Men Fix the World, our planet seems pretty screwed up again. So, once more the two hit the airwaves, corporate board rooms and tabloid front pages in The Yes Men Are Revolting, directing their activist wit towards the issue of climate change. Along the way, they are joined by Laura Nix, who produced the previous film and this time directs alongside them both. Nix’s directing credits include The Politics of Fur and The Light in Her Eyes, and below she […]
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“Making a Great Movie Music Moment”: Stuart Murdoch on God Help the Girl
There’s a certain rhetoric about the “perfect pop song” that feels like it peaked 25ish years ago somewhere on a bus in the UK, where earnest young people bonded over shared cultdom to pass the time, the guiding sensibility that (random example) led Orange Juice frontman Edwyn Collins to approach future bandmate Steve Daly because of a Buddy Holly button he was wearing — a sign they had more to talk about than initially evident. This kind of living through music is the force powering Belle and Sebastian leader Stuart Murdoch’s directorial debut God Help The Girl, an indie pop […]
