Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Editor’s Letter
Welcome to the winter 2025 edition of Filmmaker. This quarter, we’re honored to have on our cover, photographed by Misan Harriman, RaMell Ross—an extraordinary director, photographer and artist who first graced these pages when we highlighted him on our 25 New Faces list in summer 2015. At the time, he was at work on his debut documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which we were fortunate to screen early footage of. In my interview with RaMell, he said about his work: “I enter filmmaking as an artist who is wild about poetics and its emotional influence. The film […] uses […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 16, 2024 -
Talking About the Movies: Sigrid Nunez at the Cinema
When author Sigrid Nunez tells people that two of her recent novels, The Friend and What Are You Going Through, have been adapted into films, she’s amused by their inevitable reactions. “They say very somberly, ‘Are they faithful to the book? Have [you] been insulted?’” “It’s charming because it’s so naive,” she laughs. “You’d never want a transcription!” For a novelist who’s been publishing since 1995, that two strong adaptations suddenly exist—both auteurist affairs retaining their novels’ concerns and essential architecture—is quite remarkable. Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Friend is a warm, witty adaptation of Nunez’s 2018 National Book […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 16, 2024 -
2025 Sundance Film Festival Announces 93 Projects Across Its Feature Film and Episodic Programs
The Sundance Institute announced today the 87 feature films and six episodic projects selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Among the films are new pictures from returning filmmakers Cherien Dabis, Bill Condon, Amalia Ulman, Ira Sachs, and Amir “Questlove” Thompson, while in the U.S. and World Dramatic Competitions, all 20 filmmakers are making their first appearance at the festival. Additionally, 41% of the entire feature film program across the festival consists of films by first-time directors. Those statistics, says Eugene Hernandez, Director, Sundance Film Festival and Public Programing, in an interview with Filmmaker, are “a reminder of how much […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 11, 2024 -
A Different Man, No Other Land Win at 2024 Gotham Awards
Aaron Schimberg’s A24-drama of identity, appearance and personal transformation, A Different Man, won Best Picture last night at the 32nd annual Gotham Awards. No Other Land, directed by an Israel-Palestinian collective consisting of Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal , took home the Best Documentary award for its depiction of Israel’s expulsion of Palestinian West Bank residents from their homes and villages. Payal Kapadia’s Mumbai-set All We Imagine as Light won the Best International Feature Award. Two films picked up two awards each: Nickel Boys and Sing Sing. The former won Best Director for RaMell Ross and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 3, 2024 -
Filmmaker Black Friday Sale, 40% Off All Subscriptions
Please consider subscribing to Filmmaker — print or digital — for 40% off in our annual Black Friday sale. Subscribe by Tuesday, December 3, 10:00 AM, Eastern, use the coupon code BLACKFRIDAY, and receive, for U.S. readers, a four-issue print subscription for just $10 or a one-year digital subscription for just $6.00. (That’s about one month of your favorite Substack!) Next Tuesday is also the cut-off to make it onto the mailing list for our Winter print issue, which hits mailboxes and Exact Editions (all print subscriptions include a free digital edition) by the end of the year, so subscribe […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 29, 2024 -
“I Became Obsessed with the Idea that All Great Art Contains the Life Force of the Artist…”: Director Rachel Elizabeth Seed on A Photographic Memory
Filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s photographer mother Sheila Turner Seed died when she was just 18 months old, before specific memories could take hold — an absence that structures doc producer-turned-director Seed’s True/False, Hot Docs and DOC NYC-playing A Photographic Memory, which I caught at the Woodstock Film Festival. From the outset, the documentary is an archive-based biographical detective movie of sorts, following Seed over the years in which she learns about her mother by reconstructing the biography of her professional life. This work includes not only her own photography but a 1970s interview series, Images of Man, she produced with […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 24, 2024 -
“I Actually Feel Like the Firefly Was Caught in the Jar”: Tyler Taormina on His Cannes-Premiering Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
The below interview was originally published May 20, 2024, during the Cannes Film Festival, where Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point premiered in the Directors Fortnight section. It is being republished today, as the film is released nationally by IFC Films, including at New York’s IFC Center. — Editor Whether the sprawling fantasia that is Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point proves heartwarmingly reflective or personally destabilizing in its near-ethnographic study of American holiday ritual will depend, largely, on the composition and size of your own Xmas memories. It’s a strength of the film, however, that Taormina’s expansive […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 8, 2024 -
Anora, Nickel Boys, No Other Land Score 2024 Gotham Award Nominations
Anora, Nickel Boys, Challengers and I Saw the TV Glow were among the multiple 2024 Gotham Award nominees announced today by The Gotham Film & Media Institute, Filmmaker‘s publisher. Anora, winner of this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or, received the most nominations — four, including Best Picture, Best Director, Outstanding Lead Performance and Outstanding Supporting Performance. Among other films making their mark with multiple nominations are Good One, A Different Man, The Brutalist and The Fire Inside. On the documentary side, this year’s Berlin Festival Documentary Award, No Other Land, joins other international titles (Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Intercepted and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 29, 2024 -
Watch: Jesse Eisenberg Talks “Holocaust Tours with Lunch” and A Real Pain
In a newly released featurette, writer/director/actor Jesse Eisenberg, actor Kieran Culkin, producer Emma Stone and others discuss Eisenberg’s Sundance-premiering feature, A Real Pain, out Friday from Fox Searchlight. It’s a comedy/drama about two cousins navigating long suppressed tensions while on a Holocaust remembrance tour to Poland, and one obvious question to ask is in what order those two elements occurred within the development process? Was Eisenberg attracted to the Holocaust tour concept first, or wanting to explore the family rivalry? That question is answered, along with more, in the above clip.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2024 -
Production Company MEMORY Launches New Doomscroll Political Talk Show Podcast with Joshua Citarella
The latest venture from MEMORY — the 25 New Face-selected production company of producers Sebastian Pardo and Riel Roch-Decter — has kicked up a bit of mainstream attention this week, with TMZ, People Magazine and Daily Telegraph, among others, covering coded comments by The 1975’s Matty Healy on a certain ex. But the project – the Doomscroll political talk show series/podcast hosted by artist and writer Joshua Citarella and featuring Healy as the latest guest — is not another celebrity chat fest but rather a series of long-form discussions on contemporary politics, culture and theory — “‘Lex Fridman for the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 25, 2024
