Screenwriters
Interviews - Screenwriters
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Duty of Care: Sarah Friedland on Familiar Touch
Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch follows Ruth, an octogenarian woman experiencing memory loss as she transitions into assisted living. Played with luminous restraint by Kathleen Chalfant, Ruth is not someone we observe from a distance—we move with her. Told entirely from her perspective, the film unfolds through a sensory experience of time and memory. Through light, texture, sound and gesture, we come to understand what it means to live inside a body—and a mind—that is transforming. Ruth is looked after by Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle Smith), a personal support worker, and Brian (Andy McQueen), the home’s doctor. Over time, she begins to […]
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Order of Operations: Wes Anderson on The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson has retroactively described the over-schedule and over-budget making of his fourth feature, 2004’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, as the kind of production that would never be allowed to happen now. That’s partly because of shifting Hollywood windows of financing possibility, but that’s likely also in part because the writer-director wouldn’t let it happen again. On 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson made sure to work in a more sustainable and flexible way. As Jason Schwartzman told Richard Brody in 2009, “Wes not only pitched a rough idea for a movie, he also pitched a rough idea of […]
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Writing Between Worlds: Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich on The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire
“For the pattern of unfulfilled desires has trapped the Antilles and America. From the time of the arrival of the conquistadors and the rise of their technical know-how (beginning with firearms), the lands from across the Atlantic have changed, not only in facial appearance but in fear. “So, far from contradicting, diminishing or diverting our revolutionary feeling for life, surrealism shored it up. It nourished in us an impatient strength, endlessly sustaining this massive army of negations.”—Suzanne Césaire, The Great Camouflage I recently had the opportunity to (virtually) sit down with my friend and fellow artist-filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehlrich to discuss […]
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“The Best is Always Zero Budget”: David Verbeek on Tribeca 2025 Premiere The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard
In a contemporary take on Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard depicts a woman who lives amongst wolves being whisked away and plunged into human society. Director David Verbeek presents this jarring story as a kind of apocalyptic fairytale, in which a feral woman learns what it means to be human while humanity itself is bracing for the end of the world as they know it. Mostly set on a repurposed offshore oil rig, the film explores how the interests of men and nature inevitably clash in the face of impending […]
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“‘History’ with a Capital ‘H'”: Mascha Schilinski on Cannes 2025 Award-Winner Sound of Falling
Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling was so rapturously acclaimed upon its premiere on the first full day of Cannes 2025 that some thought they’d already seen a possible Palme d’Or winner. In the end, her film shared the Jury Prize with another adored Competition title, Sirât, whose end-times death-trip might seem to overshadow the ordinary-sounding logline for Sound of Falling: four generations of girls on a farm in Germany. But this film swiftly establishes itself as an equally virtuosic secret history and sustained experiment in female subjectivity in kaleidoscopic form, drawing on scenes and notes from journals and voices from […]
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“There Was No Going Around Gaza”: Raoul Peck on Cannes 2025 Premiere Orwell: 2+2=5
Raoul Peck’s new documentary Orwell: 2+2=5 opens with a credit sequence featuring images of what appear to be microscopic larvae wriggling across the screen. The message seems clear: something nefarious is afoot on this globe, but still in its incipient stages. If we fail to act, it’s going to get much worse. In recent years, the filmmaker has made direct, no-nonsense use of the nonfiction form to address, from various angles, the rot of white supremacy, its historical roots and its unchecked future. Building on I Am Not Your Negro, Silver Dollar Road, the miniseries Exterminate All the Brutes and […]
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“It’s Not Enough to Only Have Narrative”: Hlynur Pálmason on Cannes 2025 Premiere The Love That Remains
Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason’s epic 2022 film Godland mapped the crisis of faith experienced by a 19th-century Danish priest on a mission to Iceland. A majestic tapestried shot of a horse skeleton lifts viewers from the difficult physical and emotional terrain of the film’s narrative world into a realm that is more formal, ethereal, and symbolic. Similarly, Pálmason’s fourth feature, The Love That Remains, which premiered at Cannes last weekend, is only in some layers a dark comedy about the varied pains experienced by a rural Icelandic family undergoing a separation of parents Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) and Magnús (Sverrir Guðnason). Horses […]
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“I’m Not Interested in Horror Films”: Karan Kandhari on Sister Midnight
It’s a full eight-and-half minutes into Sister Midnight before newlyweds Uma (Radhika Apte) and Gopal (Ashok Pathak) even say a word to each other; conflict immediately ensues. Confined to a cramped, one-room apartment after moving to Mumbai, the spitfire Uma finds herself ill-suited to the rigid traditional roles expected of Indian brides. Her bashful husband, on the other hand, rebuffs her attempts to seduce him with a polite handshake. In this lonely arranged marriage of stifled desires and out-of-sync conversations, even bangles soon begin to feel like shackles. Despite this, Karan Kandhari’s Hindi-language directorial debut unfolds as a domestic drama […]
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“One of the Most Delicate Challenges I’ve Faced as a Filmmaker”: Kevin Haefelin on His Student Short Film Showcase Winner The Fuse
In The Fuse, an elderly sanitation worker named Cassius (non-professional actor Jorge Gabino) decides to quietly shuffle himself off of this mortal coil. Written and directed by Kevin Haefelin as part of his MFA studies at Columbia University, the narrative may not provide direct context for Cassius’ fatal decision, but it certainly does make it difficult for him to complete his morbid task. When a fuse blows out and makes electrocution an unviable option, Cassius traverses his Bronx neighborhood looking for a quick-fix to get his plan back on track. Black comedy abounds, pointing to the universe’s general indifference to […]
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Following the Currents: Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao on Caught by the Tides
With Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides sneak previewing in New York via Sideshow/Janus Films, we are unlocking our Spring, 2025 cover story, an interview with the director as well as lead Zhao Tao covering their collaboration on this film as well as across their filmographies. On May 4, 5 and 6, Jia will be doing Q&As at New York’s IFC Center and Film at Lincoln Center. Caught by the Tides opens May 9. — Editor Few major auteurs have successfully used footage from their previous films to create an entirely new one on equal footing with their greatest works, […]
