Born in what was then Leningrad, U.S.S.R., Viktor Kossakovsky embarked on his journey to become one of the world’s most celebrated and elemental nonfiction filmmakers with a love of photography and a desire to explore the complexities of Russian history. After taking on various below-the-line roles at the Leningrad Studio of Documentaries, Kossakovsky directed his first feature, Losev, a black-and-white portrait of the elderly Russian philosopher Aleksei Fedorovich Losev. For his next black-and-white film, The Belovs, Kossakovsky turned inward, documenting a spirited but warring brother and his sister living on a farm in a western Russian village he had visited […]

With their picturesque settings and unforgettable romances, Jane Austen adaptations have been cinematic staples for decades. The latest, Autumn de Wilde’s Emma, offers a colorful take on Austen’s 1815 tale of a young woman navigating relationships with the know-it-all confidence that goes with being, in Austen’s introductory description, “handsome, clever, and rich.” Much of the film’s distinctive sparkle comes from the costumes created by Oscar-winning designer Alexandra Byrne. Surprisingly, Byrne (one of whose first films was another Austen adaptation, 1995’s Persuasion) hadn’t read the novel before working on the film. “I really, really enjoyed it,” she says. “Sometimes, when you’ve […]

The following interview appears in Filmmaker‘s current Winter ’21 print edition and, a day after Minari won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, appears online for all readers for the first time. “There’s a difference between something having happened or something being true,” says writer/director Lee Isaac Chung about the interplay between memory and creation that graces his fourth dramatic feature, Minari.  Based on the filmmaker’s childhood—his family moved to the South, where his father hoped to develop a farm—Minari captures a time of familial change and uncertainty with seemingly effortless poetry and wonder. It’s the early 1980s […]

In All Light, Everywhere’s opening shot, filmmaker Theo Anthony turns the camera lens on his optic nerve, as text narration explains that we’re blind at the point where the optic nerve and retina connect—there’s a fundamental hole in our ability to view the world that, Anthony suggests, we fill with our own biases. Literally baring his blindspot on screen, Anthony concedes to the viewer that All Light, Everywhere is limited by his own subjective framework. His latest visceral essay film (following Rat Film and ESPN “30 for Short” short Subject to Review) follows Axon (formerly Taser) spokesman Steve Tuttle and Persistent Surveillance […]

One of the most understated pieces at Sundance’s New Frontier this year was Namoo, an animated short by Baobab Studios and director Erick Oh. Baobab has been pushing the boundaries of top-tier animated virtual reality since its founding in 2015, with its short immersive films growing in depth, length, and complexity and leading to a slew of awards and spun-off properties including feature films and series. Erick Oh is an award-winning director and animator from South Korea and based in California who’s worked at Pixar and with Tonko House and whose work has shown at Annecy, Anima Mundi, and other festivals. […]