Interviews
Interviews
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“The Film Is Not About AI, Not About Werner Herzog, and Never Aimed To Embrace AI Technology”: Piotr Winiewicz on His IDFA Opening Night Doc About a Hero
Piotr Winiewicz’s About a Hero is as mindbogglingly complex as its eye-catching logline is simple: “A murder mystery – unwittingly starring Werner Herzog.” More precisely, the Polish filmmaker’s doc is actually an adaptation of a script in which the aforementioned cinematic maverick travels to the fictional Getunkirchenburg to investigate the strange death of a local factory worker named Dorem Clery. Even stranger, that screenplay was written by “Kaspar” (as in Kaspar Hauser), an AI trained on the Herzog oeuvre. With a look inspired by the work of German photographer Thomas Demand, the film, shot mostly across northern Germany, also features […]
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“I Grow as I Make a Film”: Nanfu Wang on Her HBO Documentary, Night Is Not Eternal
It’s a bit surprising to think that when I last interviewed Nanfu Wang it was for her six-part HBO docuseries Mind Over Murder, which revisited an infamous case of justice gone haywire in a small town in Nebraska back in the 1980s. Which, in terms of subject matter, is a far cry from this year’s followup (also for HBO). Night Is Not Eternal is a deep character study, a format the acclaimed director has long embraced, that charts the rise of Rosa Maria Paya, daughter of Oswaldo Paya, a five-time Nobel Peace Prize-nominated activist assassinated by the Cuban government in 2012. […]
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“If No One Documents It, It Basically Doesn’t Exist”: Emily Mkrtichian on Her DOC NYC-Screening Feature Debut There Was, There Was Not
When she first started filming in the Republic of Artsakh—a small “breakaway” state where most residents were ethnically Armenian, but lived under the control of Azerbaijan—Emily Mkrtichian was planning to portray the pivotal roles local women play 30 years after experiencing a violent war. But her project was thrust in a completely different direction when the small sovereign state became besieged by sudden conflict once again. Taking its title from the opening line of most Armenian fairy tales, Mkrtichian’s feature debut is fascinated with the preservation of a place that no longer exists. For the first half of the film, […]
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“We Need to Keep Working, Otherwise Our Voices Will Be Buried and Unheard.”: Areeb Zuaiter on Her Gaza-Set DOC NYC World Premiere Yalla Parkour
Threads concerning family, identity and resistance are carefully interwoven in Yalla Parkour, Palestinian filmmaker Areeb Zuaiter’s portrait of Gaza’s scrappy yet talented troupe of parkour athletes. After getting in touch with Ahmed Matar—a young man who dreams of securing a rare visa so that he may attend international parkour tournaments—Zuaiter realizes that by documenting his story, she can reconnect with a facet of her own heritage that she had once felt completely closed off to. While her family originally hails from the city of Nablus in the West Bank, conversing with Ahmed brings out the filmmaker’s own misconceptions about life […]
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“Shifting Focus from Political Agendas To the Real Faces of Conflict”: Sareen Hairabedian on Her DOC NYC-Premiering My Sweet Land
Admittedly, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) was not in my geographic vocabulary before this region in the Caucasus Mountains took centerstage at last year’s IDFA, when first-time filmmaker Shoghakat Vardanyan nabbed top prize for 1489. The heartbreaking doc details the Armenian director’s real-time, smartphone-shot search for her brother, a young student and musician who’d been conscripted into the most recent war over their disputed homeland. And now we have Sareen Hairabedian’s cinematic, Gotham-supported My Sweet Land screening DOC NYC (where Emily Mkrtichian’s There Was, There Was Not, which follows four women in Artsakh, is also playing). Starring a bright 11-year old citizen of Artsakh named […]
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“Doc Filmmaking Can Be a Very Weird Process of Interpersonal Negotiations”: Debra Granik on Conbody vs Everybody
Though Debra Granik is no stranger to Sundance — 2004’s Down to the Bone, 2018’s Leave No Trace and 2010’s Oscar-nominated (in four categories) Winter’s Bone all premiered in Park City — I was a bit surprised to see the indie vet’s name attached to a project at the fest’s 40th edition earlier this year. Unlike the director’s prior critically-acclaimed films, Conbody vs Everybody is neither narrative nor a traditional feature doc, but a documentary in five chapters (six at Sundance, of which only parts four and five were screened) that took Granik and her longtime collaborators, EP Anne Rosellini and EP/editor Victoria […]
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“I Had Given Up on this Film”: Payal Kapadia on All We Imagine as Light
On a dull white piece of archival paper measuring 39.3 x 27.3”, ghoulish figures in wispy gray and red stenciled figures are engaged in various jousting poses. Text is sandwiched between the figures: “One day the streets all over the world will be empty. From every tomb I’ll learn all we imagine of light.” The 2016 painting by Nalini Malani, one of India’s foremost video artists, is titled All we Imagine of Light. Years later, her daughter Payal Kapadia would ask to borrow and rework the title for her film All We Imagine As Light, which would eventually go on […]
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“It Was a Process of Experience Meets Intuition Meets Dancing with the Unknown”: Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet on Their DOC NYC-Debuting Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other
Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet’s Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other is as breathtakingly understated as its title is arresting. The doc, which picked up a Special Mention: DOX:AWARD when it world-premiered at CPH:DOX last March, stars the celebrated and prolific photographer Joel Meyerowitz (a two-time Guggenheim Fellow and NEA and NEH awards recipient with 50-plus books and over 350 museum and gallery exhibitions to his credit) and his less famous partner of 30 years, the British artist-musician-novelist Maggie Barrett. It’s also an up close and personal (literally — the filmmaker couple lived with their protagonists during production) […]
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“It’s Punk Rock to Be Hopeful These Days”: Harley Chamandy on His Self-Distributed Feature Debut Allen Sunshine
The somber existence of a reclusive electronic musician is the focus of Allen Sunshine, the feature debut of 25-year-old Harley Chamandy. The eponymous character (played by Vincent Leclerc) resides in a charming lakeside cabin in Quebec, yet the idyllic nature of his surroundings is tempered by inconsolable grief over his wife’s recent death. As a big-name musical talent in her own right, the solitary Allen is pained by the fact that his grief is not just his own; though he deeply adored her and produced most of her music, it’s clear that fans, both rabid and casual alike, feel equally […]
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“Don’t Call It ‘Magic Realism'”: Andrea Arnold on Returning to Narrative Cinema with Bird
Shot and set in Gravesend, a town in Kent, England, Andrea Arnold’s new film Bird, starring newcomer Nykiya Adams alongside Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, is a portrait of a young girl coming of age under chaotic circumstances. Twelve-year-old Bailey, played brilliantly by Adams, is bound by poverty and a dearth of options to her unstable father, Bug (Keoghan); she seeks solace in whatever independence she can find. When a mysterious stranger (Rogowski) appears on her doorstep, an uncanny bond is formed between them, altering the course of her life. Bird is currently in theaters from MUBI. Filmmaker: Your narrative […]
