“Go make movies.” That was my Editor’s Letter signoff here in the earliest days of this publication. And, over the ensuing 30 years, many of you did! I won’t give Filmmaker anything more than a small amount of credit for the independent production boom in the years following our 1992 launch, but we have certainly been out there issue by issue, web page by web page, encouraging new independent filmmakers. We’ve also tried in these pages to deliver doses of reality along with our encouragement. We’ve run articles on the vicissitudes of financing, the high cost of delivery, difficult sales […]
A couple of years ago, I was chatting with writer Jack Epps, a colleague of mine at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. We were marveling over the rise of the limited series as a format, and he explained that it allows for an expanded second act. “You can really develop the relationship between a protagonist and antagonist,” he said, using Killing Eve as a great example. I was intrigued by the idea that new formats could allow different aspects of storytelling to emerge so, for this issue’s column, I asked the heads of three […]
A trio of celebrated and highly distinctive breakout movies at this year’s Sundance Film Festival—Raven Jackson’s visionary All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Savanah Leaf’s heartrending Earth Mama and Celine Song’s gripping Berlin Competition selection Past Lives—share a few conspicuous elements: They were all debut features made by women of color, they each display an impressive mastery of their forms and they were all backed by A24. A24 has been celebrating one of its biggest years ever—a record 18 total Oscar nominations and its highest grossing film in Everything Everywhere All At Once—but amidst the genre mashups, prestige star vehicles and […]
The ever-changing landscape of New York City is the captivating, challenging backdrop of A Thousand and One, writer-director A.V. Rockwell’s feature debut. Chronicling a mother and son’s loving yet fraught relationship from 1993 through 2005, the film incorporates speeches and news reports detailing specific policies of mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg across two decades, a device that serves as a concrete reminder of time passing and stakes rising for the film’s protagonists. Strict jaywalking laws, the advent of stop-and-frisk and increased gentrification initiatives become tangible perils that the Harlem-based characters must navigate, lest they lose the freedom they’ve worked […]
Increasing delays in receiving the New York State film tax credit are affecting profitability and even dissuading some from shooting in the state, say a number of independent producers. What has long been one of the most robust and dependable of tax credits in the nation has become less appealing to producers and financiers due to timelines that can stretch out to five years from the start of principal photography. These lengthening timelines, especially in the face of rising interest rates, affect independent films needing to borrow against the credit more than studio and streamer productions, which are often fully […]
A thief breaks into a Manhattan penthouse filled with priceless art. Trapped by a high-tech security system, unable to communicate with the outside world, he must figure out a way to survive. At the same time, he begins to question how much the art surrounding him is really worth. Working on his first feature, writer-director Vasilis Katsoupis set his appropriately-titled film Inside almost entirely within a single set. A few other characters appear on monitors, through windows and in flashbacks, but the movie is a showcase for Willem Dafoe, who plays the thief. Starring with him is a remarkable collection […]
Today, Metrograph announces Inge de Leeuw as their newly appointed Director of Programming, who joins the New York-based company after working as a programmer of English-language titles at International Film Festival Rotterdam for over a decade, where she introduced European audiences to filmmakers like Kogonada, Terence Nance and Eliza Hitman. (Notably, the aforementioned filmmakers each previously appeared on our 25 New Faces of Independent Film list). “Metrograph is a family built around film curation—daring, inspiring, personal programs that have driven our growth since we opened in 2016,” said Alexander Olch, Metrograph’s Founder, via a press release. “These countless detailed choices […]
In its second post-pandemic, in-person year, True/False was still trying to convince audiences to come back (there were fewer venues this year than pre-pandemic) to watch artful documentary, but the in-person joy was contagious. For one long March weekend, the True/False Film Fest turns the college town of Columbia, Missouri into an arts extravaganza. The films range from the mainstream (Going Varsity in Mariachi, a high-school competition film from the Texas border) to surprising (Milisuthando Bongela’s Milisuthando, about identity challenges in post-apartheid South Africa), to the strange (Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré’s Xaraasi Xanne/Crossing Voices, which uncompromisingly mixes past, present […]
A reliable way for filmmakers to generate audience sympathy is flattering attendees by stoking their regional pride, as at my first screening of True/False Film Fest 2023: Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s short Moune Ô, followed by the world premiere (one of eight at this year’s fest) of Sebastián Pinzón Silva and Canela Reyes’ La Bonga. Attending in-person, the latter pair spoke of the sense of community they felt in Columbia, Missouri and how that related to their film, an observation that raised some cheers. In his subsequent webcam-taped intro, Jean-Baptiste said how happy he was to have his film showing even if he […]
There’s the concept of art as therapy, and then there’s the concept of a specific artist as a therapist, which is how debuting filmmaker Ken August Meyer introduces the Swiss-German painter Paul Klee at the start of his Angel Applicant, premiering today in the SXSW Documentary Feature Competition. At the beginning of the 21st century, Meyer, an art director at Wieden+Kennedy, is struck by systemic scleroderma, a life-threatening autoimmune disease that causes scarring and tightening of the skin and which can damage internal organs. As he embarks on a treatment path, Meyer finds solace as well as a kind of […]