Screenwriters
Interviews - Screenwriters
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“I Don’t Want the Audience to Remember My Film as Just Another Film Banned in Vietnam”: Trương Minh Quý ơn His Cannes-Premiering Viêt and Nam
Set shortly before 9/11, Trương Minh Quý’s Viêt and Nam begins underground with two coal miners, their bodies soaked in sweat and caked in dirt. As they wait for instructions, they talk about a dream — one concerning water, plastic bags, and drowning. In the silence, they comfort each other by caressing each other’s faces. Suddenly, a bell rings. They rebutton their clothes. Moments later, a bomb can be heard exploding in the distance. Only above ground do the details surface: Viêt and Nam are lovers who are on the brink of separation as Nam, influenced by Vietnam’s migrant boom […]
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“I Was Definitely Paying Homage to Stories Set in Chicago”: Minhal Baig on We Grown Now
Through chronicling a critical turning point for the residents of Chicago’s now-defunct Cabrini-Green public housing project, writer-director Minhal Baig’s We Grown Now explores how the reverberations of this bygone time and place continue to register today. Set in 1992 amid the real-life death of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis—who was walking to school with his mother when a stray bullet struck him—Baig’s film follows young boys Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) as they grapple with the aftermath of the tragedy. Despite the oppressive living conditions due to Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) negligence, Malik’s home life is replete with […]
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“I’m Writing This Because I Want To See This Movie”: Screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes on Writing Challengers
On the surface, Challengers is about a single tennis match between former friends turned rivals Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). But as it flashes back and forth in time to show how their relationships with tennis champion turned coach Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) led them to this competition, it becomes much more than a typical sports drama. Challengers intelligently and entertainingly deals with issues of communication, aging, and how the pursuit of excellence can saddle one with both limitations and opportunities for transcendence. It also does all that while providing the thrills of watching “some good fucking […]
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“A Lifetime of Loving Ape Movies and Primate Documentaries and Bigfoot-Adjacent Things”: David and Nathan Zellner on Sasquatch Sunset
Since the dawn of man, there have been anthropomorphic recreations of the lives of primates (they are our evolutionary ancestors, after all). And since the legend of the Sasquatch was first told, there have been numerous recorded sightings of the elusive “Bigfoot,” albeit with most footage deemed a hoax carried out by opportunistic fraudsters in possession of hairy full-body suits. The most infamous came in 1967 in the form of footage shot by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin in Northern California—fleeting frames that, depending on whom you ask, could either be easily debunked or serve as ineffable proof of the […]
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Cutting Costs in Black and White: Phạm Ngọc Lân ơn Cu Li Never Cries
Unfolding in a Hanoi of twisting alleyways and cramped apartments, Cu Li Never Cries follows a half-dozen intertwined characters whose lives are in upheaval. Mrs. Nguyện (Minh Châu), a widow, has been gifted with a pet slow cu li, a tiny primate that may be more trouble than it’s worth. Her niece Vân (Hà Phương) helps run a day-care center on the verge of bankruptcy. Her fiancé Quang (Xuân An) has doubts about both their wedding and his future. The film’s glistening black-and-white imagery and soundtrack of patriotic anthems evoke a timeless world rarely seen in Western cinema. At the […]
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“Nine Pages a Day of Heavy Dialogue”: Bob Byington and David Krumholtz on Lousy Carter
In 2012, Bob Byington won a Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival for Somebody Up There Likes Me; last year, he returned with Lousy Carter. Writing about the festival, I said of the film: Introducing Bob Byington’s Lousy Carter alongside the writer-director, star David Krumholtz preemptively noted that while the film was shot and is set there, “Whatever you think of Texas, its politics have nothing to do with the film.” The disclaimer is accurate—this is another of Byington’s immaculately mean comedies with an underlying sentimental streak, a blend he’s been iterating with various degrees of sharpness for […]
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“We Go from 16mm to Super 16 to 35mm”: Alice Rohrwacher on La Chimera
Italian filmmaker Alice Rorhwacher’s puckish and scintillatingly tactile fourth feature is her most ambitious to date. Once again dramatizing the conflicting ideals of modernity and tradition, past and present, Rohrwacher continues to pay debt to forebears of Italian cinema like Ermanno Olmi while also infusing her film with a symbolic surrealism and neo-realist class consciousness reminiscent of the respective likes of Pier Paolo Pasolini Roberto Rossellini. La Chimera follows English archaeologist Arthur (Josh O’Connor), who possesses a mystical ability to divine the location of subterranean treasures. Freshly released from prison, he reunites with a band of tombaroli (essentially grave robbers) […]
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“It’s a Confusing World That We Inhabit”: Ryan Martin Brown on Free Time
In Free Time, writer-director-producer Ryan Martin Brown’s debut feature, directionless office drone Drew (comedian Colin Burgess) decides to quit his job. After all, the position is hardly fulfilling (nor is he particularly gifted at it), and why spend all day bleary-eyed behind a screen when all that New York City has to offer exists just outside the door? Soon enough, Drew’s naive work-life musings are proven to be drivel, and his joblessness puts a mighty strain on his few remaining social relationships. His WFH roommate Rajat (Rajat Suresh) doesn’t seem thrilled with Drew’s daytime presence in the apartment, nor does […]
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“I Really Wanted Sounds and Images to Exist Independent of Each Other”: Ryusuke Hamaguchi on Evil Does Not Exist
Evil Does Not Exist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s disquieting new film, is at once a major break from the Japanese director’s previous work and a distillation of the questions and anxieties around which his cinema has long orbited; it’s the film he seems to have been working toward his whole career. Anyone mildly familiar with Hamaguchi’s work will know the cardinal role dialogue plays in his films, which often double as symposiums—a proclivity evident long before Drive My Car’s meandering chats and late-night confessions. Pitted next to its talk-heavy predecessors, Evil Does Not Exist is a stark outlier; it may well be […]
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Forgive My Laughter: Vera Drew on The People’s Joker
The following interview with The People’s Joker writer, director and star, Vera Drew, appears in Filmmaker issue #126 and now appears online as the film receives its U.S. theatrical release from Altered Innocence. Just as The People’s Joker was preparing to premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, a “strongly worded letter” arrived that threatened immediate legal action if Vera Drew’s scrappy, bold feature debut went ahead with its multiple planned screenings. Warner Bros. was less than pleased that Drew and co-writer Bri LeRose based their film on a trademarked DC franchise, and it likely didn’t help that the […]
