Frustrated by her marriage, Sophia Tolstoy addresses her husband Leo in a series of letters that veer from bitter to defiant to pleading. Delivered by the French performer Nathalie Boutefeu, the letters and diary entries detail years of resentment and misunderstandings. A Couple marks a rare turn to narrative filmmaking by Frederick Wiseman, one of the world’s great documentarians. Shot over 17 days by Wiseman’s longtime collaborator John Davey—largely on Belle Ile, an island off the coast of Brittany—the film sets Sophia’s turmoil against the plants and animals that form a seaside garden. Wiseman spoke with Filmmaker before a screening […]
While the line “I want to believe” is most associated with The X-Files, today’s onslaught of conspiracy theorists and ravenous fact-deniers change that mantra to the more desperate “I need to believe.” After all, who needs objectivity or visual proof to confirm a preconceived notion that we wish to be true when some dude on Reddit can easily prove it for you? With a flare for endless questioning, tinfoil hat conspiracies and alternative views of history, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s two-hander, the 2022 Sundance Film Festival NEXT selection Something in the Dirt, burrows in and digs deep. Here the […]
Paul Walter Hauser is that rare character actor who has made a name for himself as a stellar talent in both comedy and drama equally. He established himself in films like BlacKkKlansman and I, Tanya, but playing Richard Jewell in Clint Eastwood’s film put him on the map. Now he’s wowing audiences and critics alike with his incredible performance as serial killer Larry Hall in the Apple+ limited series Black Bird. On this episode, he lifts the hood and lets us peek in on his acting process. He explains why his first step is all about self amusement, how mundane details help to […]
Today, the Gotham Film & Media Institute announced that director/writer/producer Gina Prince-Bythewood will receive the Filmmaker Tribute while Audible, Inc. founder and executive chairman Don Katz will receive the Innovator Tribute during this year’s Gotham Awards. The 32nd edition of the ceremony will take place live and in-person on Monday, November 28 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. You can find our previous coverage on the Gotham Awards nominees here. Prince-Bythewood recently directed the historical epic The Woman King, which hit U.S. theaters in September via Sony’s TriStar Pictures. The film centers on the Agojie, an all-woman military […]
Moderated by Darrien Gipson, Executive Director of SAGindie, this year’s Wonder Women: Producers discussion at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival was a must-catch, mostly for two glaringly obvious reasons, with the first being the wide diversity of the participants. Alongside white Brits Alison Owen (Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks, perennial panelist and SCAD Savannah Film Festival Advisory Board member) and manager/producer Laura Berwick (Belfast, All is True, and Sir Kenneth’s longtime rep), there was the English-Jamaican writer/actress/producer Nicôle Lecky (Mood, The Moor Girl) and American actress/producer Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country, Birds of Prey). Then there was the second reason—the presence of “grande dame” of indie […]
The first trailer has arrived for Darren Aronofsky‘s dark drama The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser in a highly-anticipated comeback role for the actor. The film had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in September before screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and London Film Festival. A24 will distribute the film stateside. Based on the 2012 play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter (who wrote the screenplay), The Whale follows a 600-pound man named Charlie (Fraser), a reclusive former English teacher who attempts to re-connect with his estranged 17-year-old daughter (Sadie Sink). Hong Chau […]
DOC NYC, the largest documentary film festival in the U.S., kicks off this Wednesday, November 9. Featuring more than 200 films among this year’s roster, the fest will run in-person and online from the 9th to the 17th, with New York City screenings and events taking place at IFC Center, SVA Theater and Cinépolis Chelsea. Additional virtual screenings will be streamable for audiences across the U.S. until November 27. Whether you plan on attending locally or from afar, we’ve compiled a list of 13 films to catch at this year’s 13th edition of DOC NYC, sourcing from our own previous […]
With You Resemble Me currently playing at the Angelika Film Center, Filmmaker presents two guest posts about the film’s self-distribution, one by the film’s writer and director, Dina Amer, and, below, one by producer Elizabeth Woodward. After a beautiful premiere in Venice, 30 festival awards from over 70 festivals around the world, our special film You Resemble Me did not have any meaningful distribution offers on the table. We could not believe that our only option was to take a deal that not only would place the film in a catalog of films that we didn’t feel were of the […]
It’s been nearly seven years since I embarked on the journey of my directorial debut, You Resemble Me. It has been a thorny and steep hill to climb. My film is about a woman caught in the center of a terrorist attack, notorious after being named the first female suicide bomber in Europe. I’m a Muslim Egyptian American–not a fluent French speaker–and yet I found myself drawn to a story, at once delicate and destructive, one with roots buried deep in French soil, layers of history — of, for many, injury — that are still raw. The decision to make the […]
Conventional wisdom says not to start with anything particularly difficult on the first few set ups of a new project. Start simple and let the crew acclimate to each other as they begin the process of finding the rhythm that will carry them through the long days and nights ahead. However, schedules don’t always allow you to ease into things. Sometimes, as cinematographer Alex Disenhof discovered on Amazon Studios’s The Rings of Power, you spend day one on a 14,000-foot mountaintop accessible only by helicopter. “Our first two days of shooting were on Mount Kidd, which is on [New Zealand’s] […]