Mia Threapleton and Benicio Del Toro in 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 how he’d like to make the movie, which was ‘I want to do a movie with no trailers; all the… Read more
By Vadim Rizov
Ed Harris and Chloe Sarbib on-set (photo by Saffron Burrows)
This month Filmmaker is publishing diaries from writers and directors who attended the 2025 Sundance Institute Directors Lab. Next up is Chloe Sarbib, who traveled to the Lab with Trou Normand. Here’s the description: “As her family prepares to leave their Normandy home, an aging actress becomes convinced that a lost Vichy-era heirloom is the magical solution to all her problems — but the search may dig up more than she bargained for.” A complete list of Sundance Labs participants can be found here. — Editor
In the afternoon, I hit a low. I chose this scene, my second scene, because Michelle Satter and Ilyse McKimmie told us to explore what makes us nervous, and this scene does. It’s a major turning point.… Read more
By Chloe Sarbib
Cast and crew after scene one
This month Filmmaker is publishing diaries from writers and directors who attended the 2025 Sundance Institute Directors Lab. Today we're sharing the diary of Leo Aguirre, who traveled to the Lab with Verano. Here’s the description: “An unruly teenager’s summer plans are upended when his parents decide to foster an adolescent from Central America who is seeking asylum in the United States. As the two teens realize they must share more than just a bedroom, they are forced to confront their differences amid their harsh realities.” A complete list of Sundance Labs participants can be found here. — Editor
JUNE 1: Couldn’t get any sleep before my flight, so both the flight from New York and the arrival felt extremely surreal. To top… Read more
By Leo Aguirre
The Jag (Photo: Geve Penaflor)
The titular sports car of Robin Schavoir's The Jag is parked in an imaginary space off-stage at the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, where the play is currently running in a production directed by Paul Felten. The existence of this symbolic object structures the matrix of resentment, envy and desire searchingly embodied by The Jag's on-stage trio: struggling screenwriter Tyler (Gilles Geary), rich guy art collector Brian (Mickey Solis), and nursing student Cori (Giovanna Drummond). (A fourth character, the renter of the Catskills home the three converge at, and voiced by a "downtown icon," is only heard via recited emails on the soundtrack.) The play's set-up is simple. Tyler arrives at the house expecting to spend time alone finishing the… Read more
By Scott Macaulay
Castration Movie
Louise Weard is obsessed with castration. The idea for her five-part DIY epic Castration Movie came when she was reviewing footage for a supercut of onscreen “dick destruction” subtitled Texas Birth Control—and, she notes with amusement, eating little phallic pickles.
Weard has an infectious laugh, and the things she finds funny tend to reflect her unique form of good-natured miserablism. Her characters are marginalized people who get the shit beaten out of them, physically and emotionally. Some are marginalized in ways that attract sympathy from her audience. Others, like the incel who’s the protagonist of the film’s first chapter, are not. Either way, their suffering is fodder for abject cringe comedy, and Weard puts herself at the center of the narrative… Read more
By Katie Rife
Oxbelly Beach
Greek nonprofit Oxbelly has announced in a press release the participants of the 2025 Oxbelly Retreat, taking place June 28–July 6 at Costa Navarino in Messinia, Greece.
The Oxbelly Retreat is an annual gathering of international storytellers, dedicated to the exchange of ideas, deepening of craft and broadening of artistic horizons through intercultural dialogue. Now in its tenth year, the 2025 Oxbelly Retreat includes programs for writers working in film and literary fiction. The Retreat is founded on the principles of embracing independence and risk-taking, as fellows move from early to mid-career and develop work they seek to bring to an international audience.
Every year programs are led by established writers in their respective fields – with the 2025 edition of the… Read more
By Filmmaker Staff
Reem Jubran, Calleen Koh, Nicole Chi, Eva Steinmetz and Sujin Jung
Graduate students hailing from UT Austin, Temple University, UCLA, Loyola Marymount University and CalArts are the winners of the sixth annual Student Short Film Showcase, co-presented by JetBlue, Focus Features and The Gotham, Filmmaker's publisher.
In a refreshing turn this year, all of the awardees are women. Indeed, their films focus on the rift in perspective between young women and the generation that came before them. Nicole Chi's Los Mosquitos explores the tension between a 15-year-old Honduran teen and her adorable younger cousin who, to her chagrin, becomes a bottomless vessel for adult praise; Eva Steinmetz's Marina chronicles a difficult interaction between the titular caretaker and an ailing patriarch; Reem Jubran's Don't Be Long, Little Bird finds a mother-daughter vacation shift… Read more
By Natalia Keogan
