Sundance
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“We Wanted It to be Natural, Believable”: DP Declan Quinn on The Evening Hour
In rural Appalachia, Cole (Philip Ettinger), a health aide working at a nursing home, helps make ends meet by selling off excess pills from the townspeople to other local buyers. While Cole doesn’t see himself as perpetuating a culture of addiction, he finds himself in the center of conflict between the town’s drug kingpin when a childhood friend comes back to town and encourages Cole to assert his dominance in the local drug trade. Cinematographer Declan Quinn discusses the inspiration and technique that went into Braden King’s The Evening Hour. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]
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“My Editorial Philosophy is ‘Every Frame Matters'”: Editor Matt Friedman on Palm Springs
Max Barbakow’s feature debut, Palm Springs, centers around a destination wedding and a reluctant maid of honor, Sarah (Cristin Milioti), whose younger sister is the bride to be. She finds a fellow nihilist, Nyles (Andy Samberg), who is being strung along as the date of one of the bridesmaids. Their bond grows stronger as the events surrounding the wedding become increasingly more surreal. Editor Matt Friedman talks about his part in the process of making Palm Springs, from preserving the strength of the script to the necessity of VFX for small budget indie films. Filmmaker: How and why did you […]
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“We Had to Create Something Consistent Yet Genuine”: DP Quyen Tran on Palm Springs
In Max Barbakow’s Palm Springs, Sarah (Cristin Milioti) is reluctantly assuming the role of maid of honor at her younger sister’s destination wedding. When she meets Nyles (Andy Samburg) after he helps her bail on giving a toast, she realizes she’s found an ally who also thinks that the stuffy conventions of weddings are lame. Nyles is technically the date of another bridesmaid, but he and Sarah can’t help but feel drawn to each other, eventually embracing nihilistic sentiments about the whole ordeal as it becomes increasingly more surreal. DP Quyen Tran talks about playing with subjectivity through camerawork, the […]
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“The Story Was Simultaneously Engaging, Humorous and Stressful”: Editor Joi McMillon on Zola
Janicza Bravo’s Zola is a story that was originally chronicled in 144 tweets by a woman named A’Ziah “Zola” King. The Twitter thread chronicled a high-anxiety experience that Zola had while traveling in Florida with a friend, wherein she becomes her unofficial madame, encounters her hysterical boyfriend Jarrett and finds herself in the middle of a kidnapping scenario. Bravo’s adaptation takes the straightforward yet gripping narrative of a sequence of tweets and heightens the stakes by playing with perspective. Editor Joi McMillon talks about her trajectory as an editor and what enticed her to help make Zola. Filmmaker: How and […]
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“It Is a Dark and Dire Reflection Without a Simple Solution”: Editors Langdon Page and Lauren Saffa on The Cost of Silence
Nearly a decade ago, 130 million gallons of oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico over the course of 87 days after a deadly explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling unit. During the lengthy clean-up process, workers and civilians alike were exposed to dangerous chemical dispersants, directly causing illness that no entity has been held responsible for—neither the federal government or the oil companies—and offshore drilling continues. Mark Manning, a former deep-sea oil-field diver, chronicles the human suffering and lack of accountability of this disaster in The Cost of Silence. Editors Langdon Page and Lauren Saffa detail how […]
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“A Very Fine Line Between Realism and Surrealism”: DP Wyatt Garfield on Nine Days
In Edson Oda’s Nine Days, five personified souls outside of the realm of our reality compete for the opportunity to be born on Earth. A man named Will (Winston Duke), who once experienced being born, judges the competitors over the course of nine days—only one will be allowed to continue their existence, while the other four will cease to exist. Cinematographer Wyatt Garfield details the unique cinematic language of Nine Days for Filmmaker. 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 […]
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“The Editing Doesn’t Try to Overly Emphasize Emotions”: Editor Robert Stengaard on The Painter and the Thief
When Czech painter Barbora Kysilkova has two of her naturalist works stolen from an Oslo art gallery, she decides to attend the criminal hearing of one of the men, Karl-Bertil Nordland, who was arrested for stealing them. Instead of questioning him about the whereabouts of her paintings (which vanished without a trace), she asks to paint his portrait. Benjamin Ree’s The Painter and the Thief shifts perspectives between Kysilkova and Nordland, detailing the unexpected relationship that grows between the two. Editor Robert Stengaard explains how the film went beyond sentimental emotions in order to cleverly portray the unique perspectives from […]
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Minari, Boys State Win Top Prizes at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival
Minari, Lee Isaac-Chung’s fourth feature, an autobiographical portrait of his Korean-American family’s life in the 1980s as he was growing up in a small Arkansas town, won two top prizes — the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and U.S. Dramatic Audience Award — tonight at 2020 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony. Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s Boys State, a documentary about a contentious kind of civic summer camp for Texas teens, won the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize. A24 will release both films, the latter in partnership with Apple TV+. The World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize was awarded to […]
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Sundance Institute Announces Tabitha Jackson as New Festival Director
During the festival’s 2020 awards ceremony tonight, the Sundance Institute announced Tabitha Jackson, the Director since 2013 of the Institute’s Documentary Film Program, to be the new Director of the Sundance Film Festival. Jackson will succeed John Cooper, who, after 11 years as Director of the Festival, will move into a newly created Emeritus Director role. Said the Sundance Institute’s Executive Director, Keri Putnam, in a press release, “Tabitha is fiercely devoted to independent artists, has been a visionary member of the Sundance Institute’s leadership team for the last six years. Her authenticity, experience and perspective will serve her well […]
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“What If This is the Goal? This is Everything?”: Writer/Director Edson Oda on His Sundance Hit, Nine Days
Ever so often you’ll have a film at Sundance that hits at the right time, place and with the right crowd — so that you feel the theater buzz. The last moment of the film, before it cuts to black, rings out over silence (aside from the sniffling of a handful audience members.) For me this year that film was Nine Days on Monday night at the Eccles theater. A feature debut from director Edson Oda, the expansive piece is equal parts grounded sci-fi, drama and a delicate exploration of emotion and existence. Let’s just say you don’t want to […]
