Interviews
Interviews
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Sitcom Boot Camp: Matt Shakman on WandaVision
In a world where most episodic directors tend to specialize in hour-long dramas or half-hour comedies—and some specialize even further within those formats, becoming known for procedurals or prestige dramas or multi-cam sitcoms—Matt Shakman might be the most versatile filmmaker working in television today. He has directed one of the funniest comedies on TV (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), one of the largest scale and most popular premium cable series (Game of Thrones) and was behind some of the best episodes of Succession, Fargo and Mad Men. As comfortable with network crowd-pleasers like The Good Wife as he is at the […]
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The Past Inside the Present: Jia Zhangke on Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue
With each new film, be it fiction or documentary, Jia Zhangke reasserts his status as one of the keenest chroniclers of China’s unprecedented—and unending—transformation. His latest, Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, serves as a reminder that he is not alone on his mission. The documentary consists largely of interviews with three of China’s most important authors (plus the bereaved daughter of a fourth), whose reflections on how their artistry intersects with national history echo the social commentary resounding throughout Jia’s own work. Indeed, their words could just as well be Jia’s own, serving almost as a mission statement […]
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“Five Years Have Gone By and You Still Haven’t Made a Second Feature”: Anja Marqaurdt on The Girlfriend Experience, Season Three
At the Berlin International Film Festival in 2014, the German-born Anja Marquardt’s debut feature, She’s Lost Control, premiered to positive notices and went on to a healthy festival life. A fictional account of a graduate student (Brooke Bloom) doubling as a professional sex surrogate for men struggling with physical intimacy, the film represented a unique new voice on the independent film scene, ultimately netting Marquardt Film Independent Spirit Award nominations for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay. Several years removed from that film’s theatrical run, Marquardt has now taken on a project with similar themes but a much more […]
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“The Marvel Paradigm is to Come at It Like a Movie”: Kari Skogland on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Director Kari Skogland has long been a master of tonally complex television, having helmed episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, Boardwalk Empire, The Walking Dead and many other beloved series; she also executive produced and directed several episodes of one of the best limited series of the last ten years, the Showtime Roger Ailes drama The Loudest Voice. Yet the best work of her career is her most recent, as the director of all six episodes of Marvel’s Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. An extraordinarily ambitious expansion of the Marvel universe that takes full advantage of the opportunities television […]
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“On Every Movie I Do, I Try to Test Every Single Camera I Can Get My Hands On”: DP Pawel Pogorzelski on Nobody
In the middle-aged revenge fantasy movie, the protagonist’s onslaught of violence is a reluctant one. In your John Wicks or Takens, these are men forced back into action by a transgression so grievous it demands brutal retribution. They don’t want to, but they have to. As director Ilya Naishuller points out, Nobody is an inversion of that formula. When Bob Odenkirk’s retired assassin Hutch is jarred from suburban drudgery by a home break in, he loses only a few bucks, a kitty cat bracelet and some pride. Hardly a kidnapped daughter or a murdered puppy. Hutch doesn’t have to dust off […]
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Wagner Moments: DP Manuel Alberto Claro on Melancholia at Ten Years, Lars Von Trier and Depression
Melancholia premiered in Cannes ten years ago this month and was immediately overshadowed by the infamous press conference in which its provocative Danish director, Lars Von Trier, said “I am a Nazi.” Yet, as the film rolled out across the world, its visceral and moving portrayal of depression found its way into audiences’ hearts. It stands the test of time as a rare example of a beautiful film about mental illness. The equivocation of a realistic depiction of depression in Part One as it engulfs Justine (Kirsten Dunst) on her wedding day with the science-fiction concept of the world ending […]
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“Our Aim Was to Document a Reconciliation Process Led by Kurdish Women”: Alba Sotorra on Human Rights Watch Film Festival Doc The Return: Life After ISIS
Terrorist or victim? That seems to be the animating question behind Alba Sotorra’s The Return: Life After ISIS. Premiering at SXSW, and selected for the Special Presentations section at this year’s virtual Hot Docs (April 29-May 9), the film is an up close and personal look at a group of Western women caught in nightmarish limbo in a detention camp in northern Syria. All left behind First World lives – in the US and Canada, the UK, Germany, and The Netherlands – with online propaganda-shaped dreams of rescuing fellow Muslims and finding shared community. And all ultimately became disillusioned and […]
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“Before Directing, I Never Truly Understood Just How Exhausting and Taxing the Filmmaking Process Is”: David Weil on Solos
Showrunner David Weil’s Amazon series Hunters was one of the most audacious pieces of television I saw in 2020, a profound meditation on morality and history articulated with the exhilarating narrative rush of a great genre film. Epic in its sweep and ambition, the show made me eager to see what Weil would do next—where does a filmmaker go after such a bold swing for the fences? The answer turned out to be Weil’s new show (also for Amazon) Solos, which operates at the other end of the spectrum in terms of scale but is just as daring in its […]
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“I Wondered if Metaphor and Allegory Weren’t a Way of Integrating Censorship and Accepting Oppression”: Mohammad Rasoulof on There Is No Evil
“Under conditions of terror most people will comply,” Hannah Arendt wrote from the trial of Adolf Eichmann, “but some will not.” This simple, almost simplistic sentiment permeates There Is No Evil, the new film from dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. The original Farsi title, Sheytan vojud nadarad, translates more directly to The Devil Doesn’t Exist, a phrase that may sound hopeful until you unpack its dark implications. Rasoulof is among that rarified latter group that does not comply. He has continued to live and make films in Iran despite severe restrictions and regular threats of imprisonment. Rather than retreat into […]
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“What We Were Met with During the Filming Were the True Difficulties and Trauma that Can be Associated with Migrating”: Amman Abbasi on his CAAMFest-selected short Udaan
A mother and daughter bond on a balcony, soaking in the sights and sounds of Karachi with a strange sort of pre-nostalgia, before embarking on a new life in the US. This is the opening of Amman Abbasi’s beautiful Udaan, which screens this week in the Hindsight Shorts program of CAAMFest (May 13-23). (CAAM, in partnership with Firelight Media and Reel South, launched the Hindsight initiative to provide “funding and support for diverse BIPOC filmmakers from the American South.”) Rendered with loving care and utmost nuance the scene is a reminder of something we in the US so often forget […]
