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“I Hope It’ll Be Comforting to Trans People, Because the Butterfly Narrative Leaves Out the Reality of the Experience”: I Saw the TV Glow Director Jane Schoenbrun Interviewed by Gregg Araki
I Saw the TV Glow
“I often don’t remember my dreams, and so when I do, I’ve learned to listen to what my subconscious could be trying to tell me,” director Jane Schoenbrun told Filmmaker in the leadup to the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where their sophomore dramatic feature, I Saw the TV Glow, premiered to acclaim. That admission could be seen as something of a mission statement for Schoenbrun, one that might also have been made about their 2021 microbudget debut, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. In World’s Fair, a sinister online role-playing game haunts the internet, becoming a sort of roiling unconscious for a lonely teenager seeking both connection and construction of identity. The ways in which popular culture can function as… Read more
“I Really Wanted Sounds and Images to Exist Independent of Each Other”: Ryusuke Hamaguchi on Evil Does Not Exist
Ryô Nishikawa in Evil Does Not Exist
Evil Does Not Exist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s disquieting new film, is at once a major break from the Japanese director’s previous work and a distillation of the questions and anxieties around which his cinema has long orbited; it’s the film he seems to have been working toward his whole career. Anyone mildly familiar with Hamaguchi’s work will know the cardinal role dialogue plays in his films, which often double as symposiums—a proclivity evident long before Drive My Car’s meandering chats and late-night confessions. Pitted next to its talk-heavy predecessors, Evil Does Not Exist is a stark outlier; it may well be Hamaguchi’s most laconic work yet. The film may skimp on words, but it routinely swells to an achingly melancholic score by… Read more
“As Much As I Want to Explore a Character, I Can’t Lose Sight of Those Thriller Elements”: John Rosman on His Horror Drama Hybrid, New Life
New Life
Fifteen minutes into John Rosman's elegantly scripted and emotionally harrowing debut feature, New Life, you're wired into the psyche of Jessica Murdock, a young woman fleeing an unspecified old life and grappling with primitive elements of survival: where to sleep and what to eat. And, within a few scenes, where to live, find a job and rebuild. In her impressive feature debut, a fierce Hayley Erin brings both a feral intensity as well as a wary calm to these moments, which are of the sort found in many independent films dealing with women leaving bad relationships, or of those searching for work and home in uncertain economies. The grounded realism of these scenes, and Erin's sensitive performance, almost make you… Read more
“I Was Definitely Paying Homage to Stories Set in Chicago”: Minhal Baig on We Grown Now
We Grown Now
Through chronicling a critical turning point for the residents of Chicago’s now-defunct Cabrini-Green public housing project, writer-director Minhal Baig’s We Grown Now explores how the reverberations of this bygone time and place continue to register today. Set in 1992 amid the real-life death of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis—who was walking to school with his mother when a stray bullet struck him—Baig’s film follows young boys Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) as they grapple with the aftermath of the tragedy. Despite the oppressive living conditions due to Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) negligence, Malik’s home life is replete with love and comfort. Grandmother Anita (S. Epatha Merkerson) has lived in the apartment for decades, as has single mom Dolores (a… Read more
There’s Nothing Better than Working with Talented Peers Who Give.” Judy Reyes, Back To One, Episode 289
Judy Reyes is best known for playing Carla on the TV series Scrubs, but her nearly three-decades-long career is packed with roles on long-running shows like Devious Maids, and in movies like Birth/Rebirth, for which she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Actress. Her latest is Hannah Marx’s highly anticipated screen version of John Green’s celebrated novel Turtles All The Way Down (coming to MAX on May 2nd). On this episode, she takes us back to the beginning—her “dramatic” childhood household serving as a form of acting training, defying her mother when she wanted to actually be an actor, and the support she found at the legendary LAByrinth Theater. She tells us why journaling as the character… Read more
Sundance Institute Announces Fellows for the 2024 Directors, Screenwriters, and Native Labs
The Sundance Institute announced today the the fellows selected for its 2024 Directors, Screenwriters, and Native Labs. The Native Lab in New Mexico will support four fellows and two artists in residence, and the Directors Lab in Colorado will support the development of eight projects with nine fellows, with an additional three fellows also joining for the online Screenwriters Lab held immediately after. For the first time the Directors Lab will be held at the Stanley Hotel in Estes, Colorado — Stephen King's inspiration for The Shining — while the Native Lab will be returning to Santa Fe, New Mexico, while the Screenwriters Lab will take place online. The Directors Lab is led by Artistic Director Gyula Gazdag, and advisors include… Read more
