Directors
Interviews - Directors
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Five Questions with A Teacher Director Hannah Fidell
A Teacher, filmmaker Hannah Fidell’s feature debut, focuses on the increasingly unstable Diana (Lindsay Burge), a young teacher carrying on an affair with her underage student. But the film is not too concerned with the shocking or tawdry details of this central relationship. Instead, Fidell turns her focus inwards towards Diana’s subtly crumbling mental state, treating her gradual self-destruction as the focal point of tension. It’s a subtle and precise work, and surely one of the most unnerving selections of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: Like your short The Gathering Squall, which was based on a Joyce Carol Oates […]
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Co-Director Audrey Ewell on 99% – The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film (+ Exclusive Clip)
Downtown Manhattan, September 17, 2011—the first 1,000 protestors of the Occupy movement descend upon Wall Street and its neighboring Zucotti Park, pounding the cobblestones in the face of corporate neglect. Driven by the ever-expanding gulf within the socio-economic bracket, this modern day iteration of class warfare soon sparked a worldwide phenomenon. As fervent opinions batted about and media biases multiplied, documentary filmmakers Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites sought to craft a holistic, honest portrait of the movement. Their resulting film, 99% – The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film, utilizes footage from filmmakers—novice and professional alike—from across the nation, in order […]
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Five Questions for Joy de V. Writer/Director Nadia Szold
Writer/director Nadia Szold dubs her debut feature Joy de V. “a dark Bildungsroman,” compressing as it does into a few short days a maelstrom of yearning, confusion and ultimately acceptance. As the film opens, Joy (Josephine de la Baume) abruptly walks out on her young marriage to Roman (Evan Louison), who has been living on government mental disability payments. Roman’s got another problem too, when he learns these checks are being cut off. So, while searching for his wife, Roman decides to perform “a public act of lunacy” that will demonstrate to the world his craziness. Roman crisscrosses the five […]
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Five Questions with Ain’t Them Bodies Saints Director David Lowery
Texas-based filmmaker David Lowery has been at the center of the indie scene for some time now, and not just because of his excellent 2009 directorial debut St. Nick and that film’s much lauded follow-up, the 2011 short Pioneer. Check out Lowery’s IMDB page and you’ll discover that he has worked extensively on dozens of other projects over the past few years – as editor on Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine and Dustin Guy Defa’s Bad Fever, as cinematographer on Frank Ross’ Audrey the Trainwreck, even as sound recordist for Kentucker Audley’s Open Five. With Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Lowery’s […]
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Five Questions with Prince Avalanche Director David Gordon Green
In 2011, an Icelandic-British film called Either Way won Best Film and Best Screenplay at the Torino Film Festival. Just over a year later, David Gordon Green, an American filmmaker whose own projects have debuted at Torino, has remade Either Way into the comedy Prince Avalanche starring Paul Rudd (Knocked Up) and Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild). The movie studies two men who leave their city lives to paint traffic lines down a wrecked highway. As they move through the hot summer and learn more about one another, an unexpected friendship develops. Much to everyone’s surprise, Green pulled off shooting this feature film in Texas over […]
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Five Questions with C.O.G Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez
Kyle Patrick Alvarez did something many, many writers and filmmakers have never been able to do. He attained the rights to a David Sedaris short story. Alvarez’s second feature film, C.O.G, is the first film adaptation of Sedaris’ work. Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, C.O.G wanders from Sedaris’ narrative and is instead imbued with Alvarez’s own personal experiences, which is what attracted him to adapting the story in the first place. The movie follows David, Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening), as he spends the summer in Oregan on an apple farm. While David has high expectations for his time in this rural area, he ends up […]
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Five Questions with Fruitvale Director Ryan Coogler
On January 1, 2009, a Bay Area Rapid Transit officer shot and killed unarmed 22 year-old Oscar Grant, who was being detained on the BART train’s platform for alleged fighting. With the help of cellphone cameras, witnesses filmed the officer shooting Grant and both the footage and news went viral. When the officer was convicted of only involuntary manslaughter instead of second degree murder or voluntary manslaughter, peaceful protests turned violent and riotous throughout the Bay Area as the city made its anger known. Raised in the Bay Area himself, Ryan Coogler tackles the sensitive topic of Oscar Grant’s life […]
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Five Questions with I Used to be Darker Director Matt Porterfield
Though it only arrived three years ago, Matt Porterfield’s Putty Hill, with its unique blend of fiction and documentary and its crisp, patient filmmaking, has already become quite an influential and well-loved piece of the micro-budget cannon. Now Porterfield has returned with I Used to Be Darker, a more formally scripted work that follows a troubled young woman (Deragh Campbell) who moves in with her aunt (Kim Taylor), uncle (Ned Oldham), and cousin (Hannah Gross) in Maryland. The film premieres today in US Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: Tell me a bit about the development process for […]
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Five Questions with Escape from Tomorrow Director Randy Moore
There’s something the Sundance Film Guide didn’t tell you about Escape from Tomorrow, the first narrative feature from director Randy Moore – the film was shot guerilla style, on location, at Disney World. Seriously. A debut for the ages, Escape from Tomorrow takes viewers on a surreal journey into the mind of family man Jim Walsh on the last day of his vacation at the park. After finding out that he has been unexpectedly laid off from work, Jim’s day derails until he’s bordering on a complete mental break. This is deranged, imaginative, destabilizing filmmaking – a magical film about […]
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Five Questions with It Felt Like Love Director Eliza Hittman
Coming of age tales are a longstanding mainstay of the Sundance Film Festival, but few films tackle the well-tread genre with the unsentimental eye of It Felt Like Love. The debut feature from filmmaker Eliza Hittman, It Felt Like Love stars first-time actress Gina Piersanti as fourteen-year old Lila, a Brooklyn native who spends her summer pursuing a love affair with an older teen. The film premieres today in the Sundance Film Festival’s NEXT section. Filmmaker: Your previous short, Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight, deals with themes similar to It Felt Like Love. How did your experience making that film, and […]
