Directors
Interviews - Directors
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“Children and Animals Have a Natural Intuition and Liveliness”: Xinying Lao on Her Student Short Film Showcase Winner Xiaohui and His Cows
Unlike the rest of her cohort, Xinying Lao has the distinction of being a Short Film Student Showcase winner as an underclassman. Made during her sophomore year at NYU, Xiaohui and His Cows sheds light on the widespread separation of families in rural China as parents migrate to cities for work, leaving their children behind with relatives. The film also bowed at the 2023 Berlinale in the festival’s Generation Kplus section, which is reserved for stories that explore children’s perspective. Certainly a shoo-in for the category, Lao’s short centers on the titular Xiaohui (Jinhao Wei), a nine-year-old boy living with […]
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Read Interviews With the Fifth Annual Student Short Film Showcase Winners, Awarded By The Gotham, JetBlue and Focus Features
A creepy humanoid inches closer with every blink. A young woman returns to Peru to fulfill her grandmother’s dying wish. A nine-year-old boy attempts to hide the beloved cows his grandfather must separate. A despondent man attempts to end his life to no avail. An older woman navigates ageism and desire in China. These are the varied premises of the five winners of the fifth annual Student Short Film Showcase, co-presented by JetBlue, Focus Features and The Gotham, Filmmaker‘s publisher. The five winning filmmakers are, respectively, James Ross (Don’t Blink, Florida State University), Sisa Quispe (Urpi: Her Last Wish, City […]
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“The Story Kept Growing Alongside My Real-life Experience”: Sisa Quispe on Her Student Short Film Showcase Winner Urpi: Her Last Wish
A Peruvian pilgrimage to visit the village of a recently-deceased relative propels the plot of Urpi: Her Last Wish. Helmed by Sisa Quispe as her MFA thesis film at the City College of New York, she also stars as the titular Urpi, a young American woman who travels to the Andes to reconnect with the culture she has long felt severed from. Guiding her through her personal journey is Sayri (Juan Abel Ojeda Llanos), a local Indigenous man who treks with her to remote villages in order to find the former abode of her grandmother so that Urpi may pay […]
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“Totally Smooth Productions Are a Myth”: James Ross on His Student Short Film Showcase Winner Don’t Blink
The creepy premise of Don’t Blink may be parsed by its title alone, but this still doesn’t make one prepared for the unyielding scares conjured by writer-director James Ross. Completed with the aid of his MFA cohort at Florida State University, Ross’ film takes place during the witching hour in an otherwise quaint suburban enclave. Travis (Samuel Isaiah Hunter) is eager to spend the night with his date Reese (Tamara French) at her spacious pad. The only demand the beautiful woman makes is that Travis must take a pill to ensure that he sleeps through the night. Though he agrees, […]
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“One of the Most Delicate Challenges I’ve Faced as a Filmmaker”: Kevin Haefelin on His Student Short Film Showcase Winner The Fuse
In The Fuse, an elderly sanitation worker named Cassius (non-professional actor Jorge Gabino) decides to quietly shuffle himself off of this mortal coil. Written and directed by Kevin Haefelin as part of his MFA studies at Columbia University, the narrative may not provide direct context for Cassius’ fatal decision, but it certainly does make it difficult for him to complete his morbid task. When a fuse blows out and makes electrocution an unviable option, Cassius traverses his Bronx neighborhood looking for a quick-fix to get his plan back on track. Black comedy abounds, pointing to the universe’s general indifference to […]
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Following the Currents: Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao on Caught by the Tides
With Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides sneak previewing in New York via Sideshow/Janus Films, we are unlocking our Spring, 2025 cover story, an interview with the director as well as lead Zhao Tao covering their collaboration on this film as well as across their filmographies. On May 4, 5 and 6, Jia will be doing Q&As at New York’s IFC Center and Film at Lincoln Center. Caught by the Tides opens May 9. — Editor Few major auteurs have successfully used footage from their previous films to create an entirely new one on equal footing with their greatest works, […]
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“One of our Biggest Challenges Was Painting the Pool”: Isaac Gale on Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson’s Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted is a gonzo doc that perfectly reflects its trio of carpe diem stars — fun-loving musicians who reside in a bachelor pad in the hedonistic San Fernando Valley (aka the capital of porn). That Swamp Dogg, Guitar Shorty and Moogstar also happen to be in the AARP demographic (two of the three octogenarians) only adds to the unconventionality of it all. As does the filmmakers’s choice to forego the usual biopic route, which they clearly could have taken. The titular star, born with the far more staid name Jerry […]
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“The Film Asserts a Clear Political Analysis of Zionism, and Simultaneously Does So While Asserting That No Human Beings are Villains”: Tatyana Tenenbaum on Everything You Have Is Yours
Tatyana Tenenbaum’s Everything You Have Is Yours centers on NYC-based choreographer Hadar Ahuvia, specifically her coming to terms, through her chosen art form, with the colonialism and cultural appropriation that birthed the Israeli folk dances she was raised on in Hawaii (by way of Israel/Palestine) and which she still deeply loves. It’s a maddening conundrum that likewise could be applied to the Jewish state itself. As Ahuvia reflects towards the end of the intriguing doc, “Palestinians’ lives are at risk. And Israelis’ lives are at risk because Palestinians’ lives are at risk.” And while much of the film is focused […]
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“Radiation Became a Presence—Almost Like a Mythical Force”: Zhanana Kurmasheva on We Live Here
“Some places on Earth carry a weight that is almost impossible to put into words” is how Zhanana Kurmasheva puts it in her director’s statement for We Live Here, which world-premiered at CPH:DOX and next screens in the World Showcase section at Hot Docs. Fortunately, Kurmasheva has a way with images that allows her to artistically convey both the gravity and eerie specificity of the Semipalatinsk Test Site. Set in the breathtaking Kazakh steppe, it’s an otherworldly place where the Soviets spent over four decades — until 1991 when Kazakhstan gained its independence — conducting a whopping 456 nuclear tests; […]
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“False Histories. Corny Music Biopic”: Alex Ross Perry on Pavements
“I always was hoping that it was music for the future. I mean, I think everyone who’s not that successful in their time tries to think that,” says Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus early on in Pavements, a new hybrid music documentary about the band. The group was certainly successful during their heyday in the ’90s, at least in indie rock terms—a perfect discography that drew near-universal critical acclaim, multiple tours including major international festivals and a hit on MTV—but their stature and popularity has only grown since they broke up in 1999. Beginning in 2002, Matador Records slowly re-released every […]
