Directors
Interviews - Directors
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“The More Unapologetic We Became, The More Interest We Got”: Raven Jackson on All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
Immersive and poetically expressive, Raven Jackson’s confident debut feature All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt chronicles the life of Mack, a Black Mississippi woman portrayed at different ages by four different performers, with a lived-in attentiveness and affection. Throughout Jackson’s non-linear ecosystem of portraits, quiet sequences, dewy visuals and sensual soundscapes, the filmmaker breaks the conventions of storytelling so naturally that you instantly recognize the confidence of someone well-versed enough in her art and craft to make her own set of rules. The seeds of Jackson’s approach and exactness of imagination were already planted in her short film, Nettles (2018), […]
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“A Journey That Allowed Us to Harness the Power of Storytelling”: Kaouther Ben Hania on her Cannes-winning Four Daughters
Co-winner of the Cannes 2023 Golden Eye, Kaouther Ben Hania’s (Zaineb Hates the Snow, Beauty and the Dogs) Four Daughters is both compellingly crafted and deeply disturbing. The “fictional documentary” looks back on an infamous, winding and tumultuous Tunisian saga involving five women: the titular quartet of older siblings Ghofrane and Rahma and youngest Eya and Tayssir, along with their mother Olfa Hamrouni. The younger daughters appear as themselves, and the film features two actors taking on the roles of the oldest, a necessity since Ghofrane and Rahma can’t “play” themselves, having “disappeared” back in 2015 at the tender ages of […]
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Getting Friends and Strangers to Watch Your Short Film: Frank Mosley and Hugo De Sousa on Good Condition and The Event
Good Condition is an eight-minute meditation on loneliness, technology and new beginnings. It marks the second collaboration between filmmakers Frank Mosley and Hugo De Sousa after their 2022 comedy short film, The Event, in which a filmmaker wakes up his roommate in the middle of the night to ask why he hasn’t watched his short film. This time, they embark on an eerie trip to the suburbs, following a melancholy man named Barry (Hugo De Sousa) trying to complete a transaction with a ghostly figure who keeps evading him. Good Condition premiered at Aspen ShortFest and Fantasia earlier this year, and […]
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“450 Resin-Coated Pieces of Plastic”: Production Designer Ethan Tobman and Mark Mylod on The Menu
Ahead of the first-ever International Production Design Week, the Production Designers Collective has coordinated a series of interviews with directors and production designers, in which they discuss their working dynamics and mutual passion for the craft of storytelling. Ethan Tobman describes production design as the art of “visually interpreting the world of a director through emotional architecture.” Below, he and director Mark Mylod discuss their film The Menu and going from reference images on the wall to a fully realized world structured to best absorb the viewer emotionally while furthering the narrative (along with meticulously crafting a last-minute birthday cake […]
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“Literally Filmed Within Two Miles of My House”: Larry Fessenden on Blackout, Streaming and His Role in Killers of the Flower Moon
Reviewing a boxset of writer-director Larry Fessenden’s work in 2015 for Filmmaker, I began by noting that “Fessenden can frequently be found on the outskirts of the New York filmmaking community, using his production company Glass Eye Pix as an outlet of support for fellow filmmakers.” While my summation of the celebrated horror auteur’s altruism remains accurate (the company turns 40 in 2026), Fessenden’s own films have grown tougher to get off the ground. A new film by him is therefore a major event, albeit one that happens quietly. Having made its world premiere at the 27th Fantasia International Film […]
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Reject Departmental Sectarianism: Production Designer Akin McKenzie and Writer-Director Terence Nance
Ahead of the first-ever International Production Design Week, the Production Designers Collective has coordinated a series of interviews with directors and production designers, in which they discuss their working dynamics and mutual passion for the craft of storytelling. At the heart of production designer Akin McKenzie and writer-director Terence Nance’s long-running collaboration is a mutual recognition of the importance of, as Nance puts it, “creative execution that flows from emotional framework.” The two first worked together on the Peabody-award-winning HBO show Random Acts of Flyness and went on to create Space Jam: A New Legacy and award-winning commercial campaigns for […]
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“Contrary to Jean-Luc Godard, This Film Isn’t Truth 24 Frames a Second”: Errol Morris on The Pigeon Tunnel
Heralded as perhaps the greatest espionage novelist of all time (though some find this label horribly reductive), David Cornwell, best known by his pen name John le Carré, wrote 26 novels over the course of his 60-year career. But filmmaker Errol Morris decided to chronicle the life and career of the English writer and former British Intelligence agent through the lens of his 2016 memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life. This decision makes perfect sense on paper: why wouldn’t Morris utilize Cornwell’s own recollections and reflections as the backbone of his documentary profile, particularly with a subject who, […]
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“You Provide Everything That’s in Every Shot”: Production Designer Sara K White and Director Susanna Fogel
Ahead of the first-ever International Production Design Week, the Production Designers Collective has coordinated a series of interviews with directors and production designers, in which they discuss their working dynamics and mutual passion for the craft of storytelling. In the first episode of The Wilds, one of the main characters is introduced via a quick beat of her smoking a cigarette on her family’s back deck with a nicotine-stained, pink flamingo ashtray nestled on the rail nearby. Sara K White, the show’s production designer, recalls: “We were working to build out Dot’s character—a girl who doesn’t come from money and […]
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From 50 Crew Members to Five: Director Eddie Alcazar on Divinity
“Unfortunately, because aging is so common and natural, we tend to think of it as destiny or something we should accept,” says biologist and researcher David Sinclair. And while the scientist’s work on aging and epigenetics is tied to discoveries in biology from the mid-20th century onwards, within the arts the theme of immortality goes back centuries. Filmmaker Eddie Alcazar, who appeared on our 25 New Faces list in 2011, is the latest to tackle man’s search for eternal life, doing so at a time when interest in longevity and even avoidance of death is contemplated by tech community thinkers […]
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“The Price of Making a Movie is That I Have to Direct It”: Todd Solondz on Happiness
Todd Solondz’s indelible Happiness was released 25 years ago today. Filmmaker is reposting here its interview with Solondz, the cover story of our Fall 1998 issue. — Editor Winner of the Critic’s Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Todd Solondz’s startling new Happiness is not only one of the most challenging and invigorating independent films of the year, it’s also, by virtue of the strange politics of its release, a talking point for prognosticators everywhere concerned with the co-option of indie-film attitude by corporate-controlled majors and mini-majors. Ambitiously weaving five separate tales of modern alienation, romantic woe, and shocking […]
