Interviews
Interviews
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“The Final Film Often Grows From a Process of Letting Go of Preconceived Ideas…” Editor Stephania Dulowski on Bunnylovr
In Katarina Zhu’s Sundance Competition debut, Bunnylovr, a New York City-based Chinese American cam girl (played by the writer/director) navigates a number of fraught personal relationships (her ex, terminally ill father, artist best friend and one boundary-pushing client) while also caring for a white rabbit, a gift from said client. Working with Zhu to hone and focus these storylines was editor Stephania Dulowski, a Sundance veteran who cut Haley Elizabeth Anderson’s 2024 title, Tendaberry. Below, Dulowski talks about focusing on character, delineating the film’s final beats, and how working within a commercial house has influenced her approach to editing. Filmmaker: […]
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Nine Years of Storytelling: Seth and Pete Scriver on Endless Cookie
Sundance is capable of showing some fairly excruciating and/or formulaic comedy, but one alternative this year was the shaggy DIY delight of Endless Cookie. Tucked away in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, this Canadian animation from half-brothers Seth and Pete Scriver (who are white and indigenous, respectively) daisy-chains stories about their family history, from the far-flung Shamattawa First Nation community in Manitoba (where Pete lives) to 1980s downtown Toronto (where they logged time together). Stories from the past blur with the constant activity of the house and environs where Pete’s children and dogs live as Seth visits to record people’s […]
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“Being Clean with the Words Gave Me More Freedom than Anything”: Margo Martindale, Back To One, Episode 328
In movies like Million Dollar Baby, August: Osage County, Blow The Man Down, and series like The Americans, Justified, and Sneaky Pete, “esteemed character actress Margo Martindale” loves to play people much different from herself. And she’s been so good at it for so long that she only started to get truly recognized for her work in her 60s. Three Emmys later, she’s able to pick and choose what she wants to do. Her latest, the Amazon series The Sticky, finds her number one on the call sheet and having a blast playing the bombastic maple syrup farmer Ruth Landry. […]
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“…How To Put Myself in a Situation Where the Outside Pain Helps Me Reach the Inside Pain…”: Stefan Djordjevic on His IFFR-Premiering Wind, Talk to Me
German philosopher Ernst Bloch was noted for his introspection and study around what he termed the “utopian imagination.” He put forth the concept of simultaneous non-simultaneity: the possibility that people could live in different temporalities while inhabiting the same place at the same time. Moving image work, by its very nature, can illustrate this idea like no other art form can – even without special effects or CGI. From frame to frame, sequence to sequence, a collection of purpose-built images and sounds floats through their own unique space-time continuum, evoking an awakening, a recognition, creating a genre-defying ode to staying […]
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“Compassion Should Rule the Day, Not Punishment”: Director Cole Webley on His Sundance-Premiering Drama, Omaha
A family of four—an unnamed Dad (John Magaro), his children Ella and Charlie (Molly Belle Wright and Wyatt Solis), and their Golden Retriever—hit the road at the start of Omaha, towards Nebraska. We don’t get to know too much about them at first—just that they have an old car that needs a little push, and they’ve been evicted from their home, forced to collect their most treasured possessions quickly, like they are saving memorabilia during a fire. We don’t even know why they are heading there. Cole Webley’s deeply compassionate gut-punch of a movie, which premiered in the U.S. Dramatic […]
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“There Are No Good Harnesses, Clips and Clamps That Keep a GoPro on a Dog”: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady on Their Sundance Doc Premiere, Folktales
For Jesus Camp and Detropia directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, a film can be born from the most inconspicuous of things, like something they have overheard, or a phrase that stayed with them. Folktales, their stunning documentary set in a folk school in the snow-clad Northern Norway, was no exception. During the early days of Covid, Ewing was catching the end of a podcast when American dog sledder Blair Braverman was talking about her vocation, as well as what happens to your mind when you’re alone for 12 days with a pack of dogs. As a dog and nature […]
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“We Wanted to Get Across a Sense of the Overbearing Heat”: DP Rufai Ajala on Mad Bills to Pay
Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) is director Joel Alfonso Vargas’s feature adaptation of his short film May it Go Beautifully for You, Rico. The film follows Rico, his family and his girlfriend as they adjust to the latter’s new pregnancy. The film is a 2025 Sundance Film Festival NEXT selection and was shot by Rufai Ajala, who also served as DP on the original short. Below, Ajala discusses translating New York’s summer heat into visuals and the advantages of shooting in New York City. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer […]
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“Loads of the Story Was Abstracted”: Editor Irfan Van Tuijl on Mad Bills to Pay
Joel Alfonso Vargas has adapted his short May It Go Beautifully for You, Rico into the feature-length Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo), part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s NEXT section. The film follows the carefree Rico as he attempts to get his life together when his girlfriend gets pregnant. Editor Irfan Van Tuijl, who edited May It Go Beautifully for You, Rico reprised his roll for Mad Bills to Pay. Below, he explains what it’s like to cut a film that is composed entirely of master shots and what kind of material was left […]
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COVID Zombies in the Fire: Meera Menon on Didn’t Die
Three weeks before the Sundance Midnight Madness premiere of her zombie dramedy Didn’t Die, director Meera Menon (whose credits appositely include episodes of The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead) and her partner Paul Gleason (who co-wrote and shot the film) lost their home in the Eaton fire that devastated Altadena, Los Angeles. Not only that, the film’s producer Erica Fishman and her partner Geoff Boothby, who edited the film, also lost their home in the fire. The irony is that Didn’t Die centers on a group of five in the zombie apocalypse, trying desperately to hang on to their […]
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“The Story Is Like a Lot of My Peers, Friends and Family”: Director Rashad Frett On His Sundance Competition Drama, Ricky
Rashad Frett arrives at Sundance with his debut feature, Ricky, following work as a combat medic, a stint in business school, and directing an independent TV pilot he called “a Connecticut version of The Wire.” Along the way, he heard the stories of peers who cycled in and out of the criminal justice system system. So, when enrolled at NYU Tisch Graduate Film School, he used those stories as inspiration for his thesis short, Ricky. “We had ex-offenders, police officers, parole officers, judges and family members of the incarcerated all involved and consulting on the script,” Frett told Filmmaker when […]
