Opening with a cast rendition of the 20th Century Fox (now known as Searchlight Pictures) theme that accompanies its logo, Andrew Ahn’s Fire Island finds inspiration in group dynamics. Comedians Joel Kim Booster (Model Minority), Margaret Cho (All-American Girl), and Bowen Yang (Saturday Night Live) lead an ensemble of queer friends on a weekend escape to the titular gay enclave. Although their financial prospects are dim, the tightknit group has lucked out these past few summers, crashing at the pad of their older lesbian friend, Erin (Cho). Something of a den mother, Erin greets her houseguests with “Bitch, I knew […]
It was only a matter of time before Sensory Ethnography Lab explorers Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor went inside—deep inside. Shot at eight different French hospitals, De Humani Corporis Fabrica intermingles imagery from within and without the human body, observing patients and listening in on surgeons during operations with special cameras and medical equipment. Immersive in different ways from their masterpiece Leviathan, and even more hypnotic than Caniba in aligning the screen’s surface with the textures of tissue, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor’s latest film takes its title from Vesalius’s groundbreaking 16th-century anatomy text, de- and re-familiarizing us with the interiors and […]
Gabe Klinger previously wrote at Filmmaker about the making of his Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater (2013), which is now available on the Criterion Channel. Here, he recounts the last nine years of what he describes as “his sometimes uneasy path as a feature filmmaker” and discusses his latest project. — Editor It’s approaching a decade since I shared some anecdotes in these pages about directing my debut feature, Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater. Conceived with support from Ciné+ — a French pay TV channel where one of our producers, André S. Labarthe, had a pipeline deal […]
For two weeks I lived within a Cannes-imposed schedule, with every day structured by the bookending options of a new Directors Fortnight title each morning and a new Competition film at night. More importantly, there was the 7 am roll call, when tickets were unlocked online for screenings four days out. This became a relatively smooth process once the functionally unusable press URL initially given for this purpose was changed, but those tickets still went fast. Every day (before the last four days of the festival, when this unloved ritual ceased), my roommates and I would wake up at 6:59, log […]
David Morse is one of the most respected veteran actors working in the business. St. Elsewhere, The Indian Runner, The Crossing Guard, Dancer In The Dark, House, Hack, The Green Mile, to name just a few of his past credits, and now a Tony nomination for his incredibly powerful performance in How I Learned To Drive, which he has reprised with Mary-Louise Parker 25 years after they first did it off-Broadway. I talk to him about the differences in these two incarnations, particularly one important and significant moment he arrives at toward the end of the play. He explains how […]
Critics at Cannes were divided over Triangle of Sadness, some happily going along with its soak-the-rich ride on a yacht, others unmoved by a comic setpiece with wealthy passengers throwing up their oysters. The Competition jury, however, was crystal clear on the matter: director Ruben Östlund joined a select group of two-time Palme d’Or winners, adding this laurel to his previous one for The Square. As he did at the 2017 Cannes closing ceremony, after receiving his award, Östlund lead the audience in a primal scream. This time for the 48-year-old Swede it must felt like a relief as much […]
Producer Sarah Winshall (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair) has been posting diary entries from her trip to the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Read her previous reports here. Don’t worry guys, I’ve gotten some rest and I’m feeling much better. In fact, I’ve been back home in Los Angeles two nights and both nights I dreamed I was still in Cannes. They were pleasant dreams in which my subconscious invented new films that everyone was excited to see, I bumped into new friends and was whisked off to various parties. In these dreams I’m rushing around but I’m not […]
Only a couple of months after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s completion of their decades-long endeavor to totally delegitimize the Oscars, Cannes provided another argument for doing away with all cinema awards entirely. The Vincent Lindon-led jury of nine couldn’t manage to make admirable choices even as they lauded virtually half the contenders in the field. Then again, at least one member of said jury admitted to not knowing who or how old Jerzy Skolimowski is until after the screening of his radiant EO—ex aequo winner, nevertheless, of the Jury Prize (something like third or fourth or […]
Filmmaker Pepi Ginsberg is attending Cannes for the first time with her short, The Pass, in the La Cinef section. Below, she begins a diary series on her trip there. Read an interview with Ginsberg about the film here and part one of this series here. — Editor 5/25/22 Had a celebratory bottle of champagne with the team. It felt good to sit, take a beat, share the drink. Saw Nostalgia. Was fascinating to see Naples, I’ve never been. It was painted as some kind of inferno. The grit was palpable and exotic. Called it a night after the screening […]
In France, I mostly don’t get immediately ID’d as American, which I assume is partially because I don’t conform to braying jackass US tourist type and partially because, the older I get, the more I look indeterminately “other.” Generally I first get spoken to in French and play along if I can, then when I can’t keep up I get “Do you speak English?” This is pretty flattering and will obviously only be an increasing asset as the American Experiment continues to go up in flames. A friend noted that, with its virulent displays of racism, Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N. could just as […]