Set in a dimension with certain details resembling the Pacific Northwest of the early 1980s, Mandy tells the story of a quiet, reserved lumberjack named Red Miller (Nicolas Cage), who shares a secluded cabin in the woods with the sensitive but hard-tempered Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough). These two outsiders live a simple, contented life — they work, they play, they dream — until a gang of demonic bikers called the Black Skulls kidnap Mandy at the behest of deranged cult leader Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache). Sand wishes Mandy to become the latest in his line of young brides and lovers, […]

London-based director Jayisha Patel has amassed an impressive resume in a remarkably short period of time. Since 2014 Patel’s documentary shorts have screened LAFF, SXSW, NYFF, the Berlin International Film Festival and beyond, racking up numerous awards along the way. Her latest VR project — Notes to My Father, the world’s first live-action 360-degree documentary on sex trafficking, commissioned by Oculus — premiered at Sundance. Her most recent short, the Berlinale-premiering Circle, a sensitive portrait of an adolescent rape survivor caught in the endless loop of India’s gender-based violence, made its Toronto debut this week. Currently an artist in residence […]

I went down yesterday to the port of Piraeus. …I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants. –Plato, The Republic, Book 1 In her third feature, What is Democracy?, premiering this year at the Toronto International Film Festival, director Astra Taylor takes on the role of ombudswoman to talk to a plethora of individuals about the concept and idea of democracy. As she did in her previous feature, the philosophy doc Examined Life, Taylor poses open-ended questions to her subjects, generously giving them a free rein to not only tell their personal stories but to grapple with big ideas […]

For the past eight years London’s Open City Documentary Festival has been dedicated to “celebrating the art of non-fiction,” and the upcoming 2018 edition (September 4-9) looks to be doing so in a creatively cutting edge way when it comes to immersive media. In addition to a wide-ranging Expanded Realities exhibition (divided into three themed sections, A New Lens, Motion and Sonic), OCDF will present a full day (September 7) Expanded Realities symposium featuring deep-thinking speakers tackling some of the most pressing issues affecting new media-makers today. One discussion I’m especially looking forward to is the “Barrier to Entry: Accessibility […]

French directing duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani burst onto the genre scene with their mesmerizing, impeccably crafted 2009 giallo film Amer. The married couple followed it up with the even more daring spiritual sequel The Strange Colour of Your Bodies Tears. Now, Cattet and Forzani are back and bringing their talent for precision filmmaking into other genres. In Let the Corpses Tan, based on the book Laissez bronzer les cadavres by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid, thieves steal a pile of gold and getaway to a coastal village, the home of Luce, an enigmatic artist involved in a seedy, […]

Film directors casting their significant others is a trend as old as film itself, but Colin Minihan and Brittany Allen are different. They met when he cast her in his 2014 alien invasion pic Extraterrestrial. Not only did they start dating, she started producing his films, in addition to being their star. There was the zombie-thonIt Stains the Sands Redin 2016. Now there’s What Keeps You Alive, a romantic cabin getaway that abruptly turns into a survive-the-night serial killer grinder. It’s not just about putting the one you love on screen; theirs is a true collaboration. Ever since his debut […]

The last time I interviewed Andrew Bujalski, he’d thrown a number of viewers for a loop with Results, his gym-set, quasi-romantic comedy starring Guy Pierce and Cobie Smulders. The overt weirdness of Computer Chess was one thing, but Bujalski feinting at a mainstream-leaning movie with honest-to-goodness name actors, a perky score and the promise of two hot people hooking up for a happy ending was a proposition that seemed to fry the expectations of both veteran Bujalski viewers (who didn’t see it coming) and people who didn’t know his work at all (and didn’t get the normal romcom they expected). I’m firmly […]

Adult Swim’s Tim And Eric, Awesome Show! Great Job and The Eric Andre Show ushered in a revolution of on-screen-comedy. Their new perspectives offered something so irradiated, shocking, non-linear and “random” that explaining them seemed inscrutable. You’d flip the channel if your grandma joined you at the television in fear you might have to justify it to her—in fear she might discover you’re insane. “These shows can only be the result of drug induced, inhuman, and unconscious improvisation!” The artists responsible for making you laugh are high, and maybe you ought to be while watching too. Those who “get it” […]

“I will do everything you do.” Filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar (In a Dream) dubs that his motto, his ethos, while on set. And when you watch his simultaneously epic and beautifully specific film We the Animals, it will come as no surprise that Zagar created for his collaborators such a collaborative, safe space for taking risks. Premiering at Sundance Film Festival this year where it won the NEXT Innovator award, it’s the first narrative feature for Zagar. His documentarian’s eye combined with his ability to draw vulnerable and vibrant performances from his cast creates sparkling portrait of three young boys discovering […]

Writing about Ricky D’Ambrose for last year’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, Vadim Rizov described the script of his debut feature, Notes on an Appearance, then in postproduction, as “giv[ing] a sense of a disciplined, honed gaze refined over years of self-tutoring.”  That autodidact’s precision manifests, in shorts like Six Cents in the Pocket (2015) and Spiral Jetty (2015), in straight-on close-ups of people against blank white walls or monochromatic wallpaper, or of pictures and texts and cups of coffee on tables as the sun streams through the window, and an almost monastic sound mix of epistolary voiceover and […]