At this point, it’s a running joke that any indie film worth its salt will have an extended scene featuring a woman pissing. Not just a woman sitting on the toilet, underwear around her ankles—the trickle of her stream must be fully perceptible to the viewer’s ear, subversive in its unvarnished or gritty exploration of the female experience (even with my sparser-than-usual Sundance viewing schedule this year, I’ve still clocked one extended instance of this). If a filmmaker is really being edgy, a blood-soaked tampon may appear on screen, or perhaps sparse droplets of menses slowly descending down a thigh. […]
Last month, a letter from Field of Vision’s co-founder and executive director Charlotte Cook announced that the non-profit organization would be splitting from its parent company First Look Media and become an independent studio. Formed in 2015, Field of Vision has been behind documentaries like Hale County This Morning, This Evening, American Factory and Riotsville, USA among others. They’ve also had their hand in producing several films made by 25 New Faces of Film alums, with Alison O’Daniel’s The Tuba Thieves and Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s King Coal premiering at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. As part of the split, First Look […]
Each year, Filmmaker sends all Sundance feature film or series cinematographers a questionnaire to complete ahead of their film’s festival screening. We also send out editor questionnaires and a single question for feature directors to answer. Below, find links to individual cinematographer responses, which will be updated daily during the festival. “We Had To Capture Bioluminescence on Camera in the Most Organic Way”: DP PJ López on La Pecera “It Was -30 to -40 Degrees Celsius for Most of the Shoot”: DP Bryn McCashin on My Animal “You Hope the Work Can Play a Small Part in Moving the Needle […]
The primordial fear of being watched, stalked and caught by an unknown entity lurking in the dark is the basis of Skinamarink, the microbudget feature debut from writer-director-editor Kyle Edward Ball. The incredibly loose narrative follows young siblings Kevin (Lucas Paul) and Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault) as they patter around their family’s strikingly ordinary middle-class house in the dead of night circa 1995. Their parents are nowhere to be found, all of the doors have mysteriously vanished and the lights eventually stop working. While this phenomena is enough to chill any child, their well-being is most threatened by a supernatural […]
The Sundance Institute announces today the lineup for the Beyond Film conversations at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, which will all be open to the public. The slate is comprised of three separate series—Power of Story, Cinema Café and The Big Conversation—and will feature filmmaker panels, audience discourses and broader artistic conversations. Beyond Film will be hosted in-person at the festival from January 19-23, with several conversations accessible virtually for nationwide audiences through the Festival’s online platform beginning on January 24. Also announced today are conversations hosted by Sundance Collab and several of the Festival’s partners, which are similarly available […]
In Corsage, the latest feature from writer-director Marie Kreutzer, Elisabeth, or “Sissi” as she’s affectionately known, is tired of being Empress of Austria. She walks out of official ceremonies, refuses to eat at banquets and throws herself recklessly into horse riding and gymnastics. As played by Vicky Krieps, Elisabeth gains power by rejecting her duties. Krieps’s portrayal is a far cry from the Sissi played by Romy Schneider in a late-1950s trilogy of films, still perennial Christmas favorites on European TV. For that matter, Kreutzer’s mix of fact and fiction adds an intriguing layer of complexity to the biopic genre. […]
In just three (admittedly, very momentous) years, the marketplace for independent films has completely changed. During previous turning points over the decades, executives would use words like “waves” or “cycles” to describe instances of upheaval, but what’s happening now is more like a comprehensive reset. In a recent online article titled “The Sky is Falling, Take Shelter,” producer Rebecca Green wrote, “This year is unlike anything I’ve seen in the 20 years I’ve been working in this business.” If Sundance and its films are a barometer for the independent film industry, consider this comparison: The pre-pandemic class of Sundance 2019 […]
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” is how the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein closes his early work The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In Alice Diop’s Saint Omer, Laurence Coly (played by Guslagie Malanda) is a Senegalese immigrant to France on trial for the murder of her 15-month-old daughter, who she left on a beach to be washed out to sea by the outgoing tide. A student, Coly is writing her thesis on Wittgenstein, an academic detail she’s shamed for at the trial. (Why didn’t she write on the work of “someone closer to her own culture,” a professor wonders […]
The main poster for Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans displays its characters within the frames on three strips of celluloid: young Steven Spielberg stand-in Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) holding a 16mm camera, mom Mitzi (Michelle Williams) dancing in car headlights, etc. This makes sense for the “childhood of a 1970s filmmaker” plot, and it tracks technically as well. Like every Spielberg feature—save the digital-world portions of Ready Player One, the CG of The BFG and the mocap experiment of The Adventures of Tintin—The Fabelmans is shot on 35mm. But look closely and this key art doesn’t make any sense: The vertical […]
Today, the Sundance Institute announces the comprehensive feature film lineup for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. For the first time since 2020, the Festival will reconvene in-person, with screenings taking place in Park City, Salt Lake City and the Sundance Resort from January 19-20. An online streaming window will be available for viewers across the country from January 24-29. Of the 99 feature films announced today, 94% are world premieres. “We’re so excited to be coming back in person,” Joana Vicente, Sundance Institute CEO, told Filmmaker via phone call. “Last year was quite devastating with having to pivot late in […]