Sundance
-
The Sundance Question: “How Did Events of 2020 Change Your Film?”
Each year Filmmaker asks all the incoming feature directors at Sundance one question. (To see past years’ questions and responses, click here.) This year’s question: “How did events of 2020 — any of them — change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? “The Scope of the Story Also Expanded”: Director Nanfu Wang | In the Same Breath “I Feel Like in 2020 I Was Lucky”: Director Miriam Guttmann | Seeds of Deceit “Whether It’s a Refugee Crisis or a Pandemic, We Are All in This Together”: Director […]
-
“The Scope of the Story Also Expanded”: Director Nanfu Wang | In the Same Breath
How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? In the Same Breath is a product of 2020. The project was developed in response to events from the very beginning of the year in Wuhan, and as the year unfolded and the impact of the virus was felt just about everywhere on Earth, the scope of the story also expanded. Every new day, in my personal life as well as in the making of this film, I was forced to adapt to the […]
-
“I Feel Like in 2020 I Was Lucky”: Director Miriam Guttmann | Seeds of Deceit
How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? My middle name is Mazal, which means “luck” in Hebrew. My grandmother used to say “one needs a bit of Mazal.” I feel like in 2020 I was lucky. I was able to finish the project I had been dreaming about for 2.5 years. We worked around the challenges, we feared we might fail, but we flied! (Check back daily during the festival — new answers are uploaded on the day of each film’s […]
-
“Whether It’s a Refugee Crisis or a Pandemic, We Are All in This Together”: Director Jonah Poher Rasmussen | Flee
How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? I was in Oslo, Norway finalizing Flee, when the Danish Prime Minister went on TV calling for a national lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I made it home to Copenhagen just before the borders closed and from there it felt like everything went into slow motion. The very final steps of finishing the film took as long as the rest of the entire production, and as all the cinemas around me had closed […]
-
“Box Within a Box Feeling”: DP Paul Ozgur on John and the Hole
In Pascual Sisto’s John and the Hole, John (Charlie Shotwell), seemingly unprovoked, drugs his family and tosses them into a bunker where he holds them captive. Written by Birdman co-writer Nicolás Giacobone, John and the Hole is a zoomed in look at the psychology of boyhood. DP Paul Ozgur shares his frustrations with the changing of the seasons complicating shooting and the team’s move away from romantic imagery. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Ozgur: When you get a script […]
-
“Should You Give the Person a Hug, or Should You Continue Filming?”: Benjamin Ree on His Art World Crime Doc The Painter and the Thief
The following interview with director Benjamin Ree about his documentary The Painter and the Thief was published during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. It’s being rerun now to coincide with the virtual cinema and VOD release of the film from NEON. Spectacularly cinematic and employing a risk-taking structure that keeps the viewer as off-balance as the film’s emotionally fragile protagonists, The Painter and the Thief is the second feature-length doc from Norwegian director Benjamin Ree. (Ree’s prior film Magnus, a coming-of-age tale about the chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016.) The film follows the stranger-than-fiction story of […]
-
Sundance 2020 Final Dispatch: Softie, Farewell Amor, A Machine for Viewing, Infinitely Yours
Previously, when attending a premiere heavy festival like Sundance, I was usually lucky enough to be present as part of a team of programmers. We divided the screenings between all of us to cover as many of the films as possible. (There are spreadsheets and rating systems involved.) Watching films as a freelancer, I realized over the first few days at Sundance that I was playing it safe by watching films by filmmakers I was already familiar with for the guarantee that at least the film would appear finished at the screening. For programmers working at festivals like Sundance, what […]
-
“I Was Taken by the Capriciousness and Boldness of his Flirtation”: Heidi Ewing | I Carry You With Me
Whether capturing or creating a world, the objects onscreen tell as much of a story as the people within it. Whether sourced or accidental, insert shot or background detail, what prop or piece of set decoration do you find particularly integral to your film? What story does it tell? It’s 1995 in conservative Puebla, Mexico and we’re inside Bar Franco, a clandestine gay watering hole located in an old mansion. Gerardo, a regular, spots a man at the bar (Iván) whom he’s not seen before. He’s intrigued. There is a quick but promising glance between them. But how to be […]
-
Sundance 2020 Dispatch 9: Dick Johnson is Dead, Tesla
I don’t have anything like Six Takeaways From This Year’s Sundance to structure my final dispatch: The most I can offer is my general peer group’s consensus that the fiction side was relatively quiet while nonfiction work was stronger and more attention-getting, including the four-film launch of Concordia Studio. They arrived with, among others, my personal best-of-fest Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets and Time, and ended their first Sundance with the (reported) $12 million sale of verité doc Boys State to Apple and A24. Also high on the nonfiction priorities list, via Netflix, was Kirsten Johnson’s Dick Johnson is Dead, which premiered with the director […]
-
“We Learned to Lean into the More Lyrical Aspects of the Story and Let the Emotion Carry the Day”: Editors Michael Taylor and Jeff Betancourt on Nine Days
In an alternate reality, Will (Winston Duke) carries the burden of choosing which among nine candidates has what it takes to be born into the world as a full-fledged human being. Nine Days follows these souls through a series of trials designed to determine who among them will receive the gift of life and personhood, and who must resign from existence once the nine days are complete. Editors Michael Taylor and Jeff Betancourt delve into the many screenings, cuts and reworks that went into shaping director Edson Oda’s film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your […]
