Editors
Interviews - Editors
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“Knowing How to Take Feedback Is an Art”: Editor Lev Lewis on Dead Lover
When a young grave digger (Grace Glowicki) finds love—despite her crude demeanor and disheveled appearance—she vows that it will be eternal. When her betrothed dies at sea, she decides to revive her dream man out of the corpses that she buries every day. Glowicki serves as the writer, director and star in this horror-comedy take on Mary Shelley’s iconic sci-fi novel. Editor Lev Lewis tells Filmmaker about the extensive test screening process, his preference for cutting on Premiere and why he’s “thrilled” to be part of the team that made Dead Lover. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor […]
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“Amanda’s Approach is About Eclecticism”: Editor Benjamin Shearn on By Design
By Design is the latest feature film by Amanda Kramer, best known for Please Baby Please and Ladyworld. The film will premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival as part of the NEXT section. Benjamin Shearn, who has edited all of Kramer’s feature films, joined her once again in the cutting room for By Design. Below, he explains how his close friendship with Kramer helps him retain the magic in the edit. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led […]
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“The Language of the Film Slowly Emerges in the Editing Room”: Editor Michal Reich on DJ Ahmet
A fifteen-year-old boy navigates first love, familial pressure and his newfound love of music in DJ Ahmet, premiering in the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition. The film is the feature debut by Sundance Short Film Program alum Georgi M. Unkovski. Michal Reich (The Ballad of Piargy) served as his former university mate’s editor. Below, he talks about moving scenes around in the edit to provide the desired emotional arc and preserving the performances of non-professional actors. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of […]
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“It Was an Ambitious Project From the Get-go”: Editor Bryan Mason on Jimpa
Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde), a non-binary teenager, falls in love with Amsterdam on a visit to her beloved grandpa (John Lithgow), who she affectionately calls Jimpa, in Sophie Hyde’s film of the same name. Deciding that she wants to stay with Jimpa for an entire year, her mother (Olivia Colman) wrestles with her parenting instincts and the idea of what’s best for her child. Editor Bryan Mason discusses cutting Jimpa, shedding insight on his recurrent collaboration with Hyde, the question he always asks himself before embarking on a project and his background as a skate video editor. See all responses to our […]
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“What Paul Was Saying Was Very Reflective of Who He Was”: Editor Damian Rodriguez on Pee-wee as Himself
Filmmaker Matt Wolf chronicles the life and career of Paul Reubens—best known as his alter ego Pee-wee Herman—via intimate interviews and a trove of archival footage in Pee-wee as Himself. Filmed before the artist’s recent death, the series premieres in Sundance’s Episodic section. Editor Damian Rodriguez discusses navigating Herman’s enormous personal archive, how the actor’s passing altered the film’s narrative and passing down his own affinity for Pee-wee’s Playhouse to his son. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and […]
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“Paring the Story Down to Its Bare Essentials”: Editor Joshua L. Pearson on Sly Lives
Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) examines the life and legacy of legendary funk act Sly & The Family Stone. Rather than biography, the film opts as an examination of legacy that combines archival footage with discussions among friends, family and other musicians. The film is Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s follow-up to the award-winning Summer of Soul. For the new film, he reteamed with editor Joshua L. Pearson, who explains how his background in music and long history with music videos prepared him for the job. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did […]
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Sundance 2025: Editor Interviews
Each year, Filmmaker sends all Sundance feature film or series editors a questionnaire to complete ahead of their film’s festival screening. We also send out a single question for feature directors to answer as well as questionnaires for cinematographers and first-time Sundance feature producers. Below, find links to individual editor responses, which will be updated daily during the festival. “Paring the Story Down to Its Bare Essentials”: Editor Joshua L. Pearson on Sly Lives “What Paul Was Saying Was Very Reflective of Who He Was”: Editor Damian Rodriguez on Pee-wee as Himself “It Was an Ambitious Project From the Get-go”: Editor Bryan […]
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Until the Last Beat: Nick Emerson on Editing Conclave
In Conclave, corruption, betrayal and clashing ideologies turn the selection of a new pope into fertile ground for a taut political thriller as English cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is caught in the middle of the struggle between a conservative caucus wishing to return the Catholic church to its dogmatic past and a liberal wing pushing for a more open-minded future. As dean of the proceedings, Fiennes is tasked with shaking off his own crisis of faith in order to guide 120 fractious cardinals sequestered in the Vatican to a consensus on a new leader. The parallels between the film’s […]
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“Musicals Are the Hardest Thing I Could Ever Cut”: Editor Myron Kerstein on Wicked
For Myron Kerstein, whose work on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s feature debut Tick, Tick… Boom! earned him a 2022 Oscar nomination for best editing, cutting a musical number is no different than any other scene in a movie. With Wicked, the editor’s third collaboration with director Jon M. Chu (following Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights), Kerstein had roughly 250 hours of footage to assemble into the two-part adaptation of the long-running and beloved Broadway musical that serves as a prequel to The Wizard of Oz—and honoring both the stage show and the classic 1939 film brought extra challenges to the […]
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Sequential Notes: Angela Schanelec on Music
Since her debut feature, My Sister’s Good Fortune (1995), Angela Schanelec has steadily established herself as one of the Europe’s most idiosyncratic filmmakers. Across nine features, Schanelec’s style has evolved but retained consistent qualities: stark, clean visuals and crisp editing combined with elusive narrative techniques that crescendo into unexpected moments of emotional catharsis. A subject of hardcore cinephile fandom since her 2019 feature I Was at Home, But…, Schanelec seems to be gaining broader acceptance. Still, the peculiarities of her approach can be off-putting for general audiences. I first encountered Schanelec’s work at the Locarno Film Festival, where I was […]
