At a festival as big as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, early screenings are essentially shots in the dark. There is no buzz yet, and most films have little written about them or are by filmmakers whose previous works have received relatively little exposure. I opted on the second day to give Luis López Carrasco’s El Año del Descubrimiento a shot partly because I had heard of his previous feature, El Futuro, but mostly because its 200-minute runtime helped it to stand out amid a slate of films I knew next to nothing about. From the very beginning, its use […]

On Valentine’s Day 2018 the community of Parkland, Florida was irrevocably transported into the headlines. That was the day when a 19-year old gunman walked into the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and took the lives of 17 of its students. In the aftermath of the horrific event news crews descended as grieving parents and children struggled to find footing in a new reality. And while a great many reporters packed up once the soundbites ran out, veteran journalists Emily Taguchi and Jake Lefferman stayed behind — and got to truly know the fathers and mothers and siblings, the significant […]

Kudos to the author of the unusually compelling copy for Slow Machine in the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s catalogue. The elephantine program, encompassing more than 500 films whose wild assortment of lengths, genres and formats defies any attempt at meaningful categorization (its four main sections this year were split into 23 subsections) is filled with gems, but offers scant assistance in discovering those not already on one’s radar. It’s a frustrating contradiction: Rotterdam takes rightful pride in offering a platform to smaller films by less established but adventurous and vigorously creative artists, yet so often they get buried in a […]

Bruce Franks Jr., an African-American resident of St. Louis, Missouri, grew fed up with senseless gun violence running rampant throughout his community. Inspired in part by the Black Lives Matter protests of Ferguson, MO following the 2014 slaying of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, Franks Jr. decided to run for office and was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democractic state legislator. Filmmakers Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan’s St. Louis Superman, nominated for Best Documentary (Short Subject) at this weekend’s Academy Awards, chronicles Franks Jr.’s year-long quest to pass a bill that will classify youth-affected gun violence as an epidemic. […]

As two, aunt and nephew Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala hope to disperse the ego of the moviemaking machine. They split the single mindedness of the one-director show and harness twice the fighting power in their creative battles against the industry’s business end. Moving to a US production for their sophomore feature: The Lodge, the two saw the ugly head of commerce rear itself more than it ever dared in Austria, where they shot their debut Goodnight Mommy. The Lodge begins with a bias for its young siblings Aidan (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh) who have lost their mother […]

Access, access, access — be it physical, emotional, or preferably both — is the doc filmmaker’s equivalent of location. And Brazilian director Petra Costa manages to get it in spades. Currently streaming on Netflix, her Oscar-nominated epic The Edge of Democracy, the third film in a personal, award-winning trilogy that began with the 2009 short Undertow Eyes, followed by her debut feature Elena three years later, is easily Costa’s most ambitious to date.  With fly-on-the-wall camerawork, and guided by her eloquent voiceover narration, Costa captures up close and in real time the democratic car wreck of recent corruption scandals in Brazil that led to the […]

This is a very special episode of Back To One. Last year, in September, I sat down with the stars of Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel, and their director, Céline Sciamma. On this show, I only sit down with one actor every week, so for me to sit with two actors and their director from the same film, it must be very special. And it is a very special film.  For me, it is the purest example, in recent memory, of a perfect synthesis of direction and performance. The exemplary work of these three […]

In an alternate reality, Will (Winston Duke) carries the burden of choosing which among nine candidates has what it takes to be born into the world as a full-fledged human being. Nine Days follows these souls through a series of trials designed to determine who among them will receive the gift of life and personhood, and who must resign from existence once the nine days are complete. Editors Michael Taylor and Jeff Betancourt delve into the many screenings, cuts and reworks that went into shaping director Edson Oda’s  film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your […]

Director Sam Feder grapples with the legacy and representation of transgender actors and characters onscreen in Hollywood. While these depictions have been overwhelmingly negative and lacking in a nuanced understanding of trans identity, the reality of American anxieties surrounding gender are explicitly conveyed through these depictions. Featuring interviews with Laverne Cox, Lily Wachowski and Yance Ford among other trans thinkers and creatives, Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen chronicles a difficult legacy of trans characters in the industry, while also pointing to a more fruitful future for trans actors and representation on screen. Editor Stacy Goldate speaks about the use of […]

In Compton, California, a teenage girl named Aleteia copes with being the new girl at school by immersing herself in underground activism. Aleteia grew up in the United States, but as an immigrant from El Salvador, she suddenly finds her protected status under attack. During this tumultuous time, Aleteia unexpectedly falls in favor with one of the most popular girls at school, Rosarito, and as their friendship blossoms, Aleteia finds it more important than ever to find a way to stay in her hometown. DP Matt Maio talks about the advantages of working with director Patricia Vidal Delgado and the […]