Interviews
Interviews
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Make a $100,000 Genre Movie in 12 Days in Chicago: Writer/Director Zach Clark on The Becomers
High-concept movie formula makers will have a field day with Zach Clark’s The Becomers. Is its tender, yet often violent, saga of star-crossed – and serial human body inhabiting – lovers a hybrid of The Man Who Fell to Earth and Todd Solondz’ Palindromes (whose lead character is played by eight different actors) or an Invasion of the Body Snatchers updated for an N95-masked America? Or … something else? Clark’s first film since his widely beloved Little Sister (2016) wasn’t one he had in the pipeline. The New York-based writer-director-editor had put a heroic effort into launching a project on […]
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“I Always Write for Places Where They Won’t Kick Me Out”: Kazik Radwanski on Matt and Mara
Matt and Mara presents a familiar premise—two old friends with an unresolved romantic connection reconnect years after their lives have diverged—but Canadian writer-director Kazik Radwanski turns this potentially contrived narrative into an organic examination of interpersonal dynamics that’s tailored to the strengths of his performers and longtime creative collaborators Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson. When Matt (Johnson) grabs the attention of creative writing professor Mara (Campbell) right before she’s about to start class, it’s clear both are looking to break out of their ruts. Mara is out of sync with her musician husband Samir (Mounir Al Shami) amidst the daily […]
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The Monster You Become: Coralie Fargeat on The Substance
Even for the most callous horror-heads, Coralie Fargeat’s debut feature, Revenge (2017), stunned with its gruesome rape-revenge plot and blunt-force style, announcing the French director as a genre talent on the rise, capable of invoking her cinematic inspirations while departing from them on her own frenzied, feminist terms. The Substance, which won the award for Best Screenplay when it premiered at Cannes earlier this year, somehow cranks up the madness even further, unfolding a dark Hollywood fairytale about aging and feminine beauty standards that stands among the most adventurous in the body horror genre. Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a […]
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History Repeats the Old Conceits: Johan Grimonprez on Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, by Belgian artist and filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, is an essay film of many dimensions: the high tensions of the Cold War, the activism of the Black Civil Rights movement in America and its solidarity with the independence movements that were sweeping across Africa, the power grab between the East and West for control over minerals and resources in the Congo and the relentless espionage attempts to undermine those efforts, including the CIA sending jazz ambassadors to covertly gain intelligence. Plunging viewers into the historical events surrounding Congolese National Movement leader Patrice Lumumba’s leadership and assassination […]
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The New You: Aaron Schimberg on A Different Man
Aaron Schimberg has always had a personal interest in facial disfigurement. The New York–based writer-director was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate, along with other medical issues, and has spent the majority of his filmmaking career grappling with people’s perception of him. Much of that has manifested into his bold and sharp-witted filmography, which has considered questions about his place in the world and the ways cinema has shaped prejudice and attitudes toward disfigurement. “I write these films as therapy in some sense,” Schimberg tells Filmmaker. “It’s an ineffective form of therapy because I get done with them […]
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“There’s Only One Life, and I Believe in Tarantino’s Idea of a Strong, Solid Filmography”: Sean Baker on His Oscar-Winning Anora
With Sean Baker’s Anora winning five Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Original Editing and Best Actress) last night at the 2025 Academy Awards, we’re reposting our Fall, 2024 cover story interview with Baker. “Tonight, this could be the greatest night of our lives/let’s make a new start/The future is ours to find.” The lyrics of Take That’s 2008 hit “Greatest Day” burst from the soundtrack at the start of Sean Baker’s exhilarating, Palme d’Or–winning eighth feature, Anora. Drew Daniels’ camera tracks across a row of strippers and customers at a Manhattan club before cutting to handheld shots […]
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Off Screen Spaces: Azazel Jacobs on His Three Daughters
Azazel Jacobs’s films treat the tragicomedy of human existence with tenderness and a heartbreakingly honest sense of the absurd. In his first released feature, The GoodTimesKid (2005), the anti-hero (played by Jacobs) is trapped in a repetitive nightmare of mistaken identity punctuated by Marx Brothers slapstick and 1930s movie dance routines. Jacobs made it with colleagues and friends he met when he was getting his MFA from the AFI Conservatory, some of whom became a permanent part of his team, including his wife Diaz, an actor and filmmaker in her own right. Momma’s Man (2008) memorialized the trauma of moving […]
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“The Budgetary Challenges of Getting a Dead Squirrel Puppet”: DP Sam Davis on Dìdi
In the opening scene of Dìdi, the titular 13-year-old and his friends film themselves blowing up a mailbox and making a run for it while laughing hysterically. It perfectly encapsulates director Sean Wang’s view of adolescence as “the worst version of yourself, having the best time of your life.” Set in 2008 in Wang’s hometown of Fremont, California, the coming-of-age story follows a Taiwanese American teen during his final summer before high school. Though not strictly autobiographical, the film was inspired by Wang’s own adolescence and the making of it was awash in familiarity. The main character’s bedroom scenes were […]
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“We Ascribe this Cuteness to Older Women”: Sarah Friedland on Familiar Touch
Depicting aging and diminishing mental acuity, with increasing candor about same, essentially has become its own subgenre—the drama of descent or disappearance. Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch feels like something different, eschewing the conventions of linear decline to stay rooted in the present-tense bodily experience of its protagonist: Ruth Goldman, played by a galvanizing Kathleen Chalfant. Beyond the subjective design of the filmmaking—comprising not just what we hear, but how we understand the premise of any given scene—this is a catalyzing collaboration between Chalfant, storied veteran of both stage (Wit) and screen, and Friedland, a student of choreography who sought out […]
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“The Process Was More Important Than the Result”: My First Film Star Odessa Young, Back To One, Episode 308
Odessa Young is only 26, but she already has a truly impressive body of work behind her. Assassination Nation, A Million Little Pieces, Shirley, Mothering Sunday, The Stand, The Staircase, Manodrome, in each of these projects, she seems to have an effortless command over her character, each unique, never forced, always true. Now she stars as Vita, the lead character based on Zia Anger in My First Film. On this episode, she talks about the need to “cultivate an obsession” as character preparation, recent musings on “how much an actor should act to the camera,” why she never worries about […]
