Interviews
Interviews
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Order Fulfillment: Director Halina Reijn on Babygirl
It’s appropriate that Halina Reijn, the Dutch actress-turned-filmmaker who previously directed the Gen Z whodunnit Bodies Bodies Bodies, would look to ’90s erotic thrillers as fodder for her next feature. After all, her countryman Paul Verhoeven (she has a supporting role in his Black Book) is considered the de facto master of this genre, bringing his penchant for the perverse to Hollywood with pictures such as Basic Instinct. Babygirl, Reijn’s English-language feature debut as writer-director, is less enamored with this bygone era than it is interested in deploying its framework within a personal, subversively feminist perspective. But make no mistake: […]
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17 Soundstages and 750 Crew Members: DP Alice Brooks on Wicked
Drawing on a huge fanbase, the screen adaptation of Wicked has helped revitalize the year-end theatrical box office. Director Jon M. Chu’s Wicked builds on its Broadway pedigree by casting Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande as Elphaba and Galinda/Glinda, frenemies who are summoned to the Emerald City by the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum). Wicked unfolds on a massive scale that can feel overwhelming. Nine million tulips were planted for an exterior scene. One set encompassed two soundstages with the wall between them removed. The score by Stephen Schwartz and John Powell was performed by an eighty-member orchestra. Finding intimate, […]
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“We Discover What the Film Is When We Watch It”: Marianne Jean-Baptiste on Hard Truths
Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths is a study in contrasts. At the center of the tale are two sisters, Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and Chantelle (Michele Austin), who are as dissimilar as possible. While Chantelle, a hairdresser and single mother of two adult daughters, has a cheerful outlook on life, Pansy is brash, gruff and downright mean toward everyone she encounters—from strangers in the grocery store and the local furniture shop to her detached husband Curtley (David Webber) and reclusive son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett). Over the course of 100 minutes, it’s easy to despise Pansy because of her shockingly short temper and […]
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“You Can Be a Troubled Teen at Any Point in Your Life”: Filmmakers — and MacDowell Fellows — Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew on Their Metrograph Series
Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew met as undergraduate film students at NYU, where they honed a collaborative practice that responded to the high-budget, high-flown projects of their peers with DIY aesthetics and an emphasis on developing their own formal language. Folding in experiences from their respective careers in the worlds and subcultures of art, fashion, and publishing, First (2018), Negative Two (2019) and 38 (2023) form a triptych of canny portraits of New York subcultures and of personal lives unfolding in uneasy symbiosis with the internet. In advance of a series presented by Metrograph and MacDowell, where Chew and Durand […]
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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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“We Needed Crazier Ideas”: DP Mihai Malaimare Jr. on Megalopolis
During his storied career, Francis Ford Coppola forged relationships with some of film’s most renowned cinematographers: Gordon Willis, Vittorio Storaro, Bill Butler, John Toll and Jordan Cronenweth all shot multiple projects for him. But with Megalopolis, Mihai Malaimare Jr. becomes Coppola’s most frequent collaborator behind the camera. They first met when Coppola came to Malaimare’s native Romania to shoot 2007’s Youth Without Youth, the beginning of a low-budget experimental phase for Coppola that included the Malaimare-shot Tetro and Twixt. Even then, Coppola was already dreaming of his quixotic passion project Megalopolis, showing Malaimare concept art and B-roll of New York […]
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“Transitioning From Digital Back to Film”: DP Ed Lachman on Maria
For years the object of cult devotion, Maria Callas went from a dazzling career as a soprano to international celebrity, a figure of relentless scrutiny even after she lapsed into silence. Maria continues director Pablo Larraín’s fascination with larger-than-life figures like Jacqueline Onassis (Jackie) and Princess Diana (Spencer). Here, Angelina Jolie takes on the role of Callas, seen over several years of her life in Europe and the United States. Larraín’s kaleidoscopic approach jumps among timelines and locations, assembling a character from moments large and small. Although we see glimpses of Callas’s successes on stage, Steven Knight’s screenplay primarily takes […]
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“A Meditation on the Stigmas of Colonization”: Mati Diop on Dahomey
Mati Diop likes summoning spirits. In 2019’s Cannes-premiering Atlantics, the ghosts of young Senegalese men lost in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Dakar come back to haunt people in their bid to demand what is rightfully theirs. In her latest hybrid documentary, Dahomey—which won the Golden Bear at Berlinale this year—she exorcises the spirit of artifacts looted by the French from the West African kingdom of Dahomey between 1892-94. After centuries of lying inert in Paris’ Musée du quai Branly, 26 of these artifacts were restituted to Benin in 2021. Dahomey not only documents their long journey home […]
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“Stereotypes Help People Delegitimize Other People and Ideas They Want to Distance Themselves From”: Michael Premo on Homegrown
While the eruption of violence at the US Capitol on January 6th left most Americans dazed and confused — and too many journalists and talking heads scrambling to dissect the psyche of the rioters as if they were extraterrestrial beings and not our actual next-door neighbors — multimedia artist Michael Premo had been listening and filming throughout the summer of 2020 with open ears and eyes all along. His Venice-debuting Homegrown follows three diverse (yes, diverse) Trump-supporting “patriots”: an excited young father-to-be (to a biracial child) in New Jersey, an Air Force vet and rightwing organizer in “liberal” NYC, and […]
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“This World Is Hell for Women”: Magnus von Horn on The Girl with the Needle
Caroline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young factory worker living in abject poverty, serves as our window into the perilous post-war landscape of Copenhagen circa 1919 in The Girl with the Needle. Her dire situation is compounded by her social position as a working class woman, particularly since her husband, Peter (Besir Zeciri), has been out of the picture since he signed up to fight in the Great War (despite the country’s broader policy of neutrality). After she becomes pregnant by her wealthy boss, Jorgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), Caroline anticipates a new life of abundance and relative privilege. Of course, this inter-caste […]
