6576 Results for “production”
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TIFF 2016: Five Questions for Katie Says Goodbye Writer/Director Wayne Roberts
Katie Says Goodbye reps the feature directing debut of Alaska-born NYU writer/director Wayne Roberts. An alumni film of the IFP Narrative Lab, Katie Says Goodbye is described as “a cautionary tale for dreamers,” a dark drama about a young waitress striving to leave New Mexico for a new and better life in San Francisco. There’s a brutal scene at the film’s core, which we circle around in non-spoiler fashion in the below interview, in which we also discuss Roberts’ casting of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl‘s Olivia Cooke in his lead role as well as his advice to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 10, 2016 -
TIFF 2016: Five Questions for Girl Unbound Director Erin Heidenreich
Erin Heidenreich brings the documentary Girl Unbound to the Toronto International Film Festival as a first-time feature director, but she’s already amassed a great amount of experience in the world of independent film. She’s been a documentary producer, executive producer, second-unit director as well as an original employee of Cinetic Media, where she was involved in the sales of many of the most successful independent films of the ’00s. Girl Unbound follows squash player Maria Toorpakai as she competes internationally, representing her native Pakistan in tournaments around the world. But Girl Unbound isn’t simply a sports doc as Toorapaki hails […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 10, 2016 -
TIFF Critic’s Notebook 3: Hermia & Helena, The Dreamed Ones, Graduation
Matías Piñeiro has been living in NYC for a few years now, so it’s logical he’d eventually make a film set at least partially there. I can’t pretend to a lack of rooting interest: I know, casually or closely, a semi-significant number of people who worked on or acted in this, did a set report (meaning I spent part of the first viewing waiting to see what was actually being said in the shot I saw filmed) and, if you go to a lot of rep cinema in the city, Piñeiro — a serious, inveterate cinephile — is just kind of generally around. Hermia […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 10, 2016 -
Five Questions for Lady Macbeth Director William Oldroyd
With William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth now in U.S. theaters, we’re resposting this interview that originally appeared during the Toronto Film Festival. Heading into its world premiere today in the auteur-centric Platform section at the Toronto International Film Festival with considerable buzz is the feature debut of acclaimed theater director William Oldroyd, Lady Macbeth. Adapted by the young British playwright Alice Birch from Nikolai Leskov’s 1865 novel, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, a work compared in its day to another work of literature with a strong female protagonist, Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, published just a year later. A Director in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 9, 2016 -
TIFF Critic’s Notebook 2: Nocturama, A Decent Woman, The Red Turtle
When Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama was conspicuously rejected from Cannes, fest director Thierry Frémaux wouldn’t comment on its absence: was he simply currently leery of any images of mass explosions in Paris, or was there something more offensive to the film? Nocturama is to some (arguable) degree a shallow movie with a flippant/trivializing attitude, rejecting the default gravity granted its subject, which means someone will definitely get upset about the film. It’s also a highly recommended, original and (this may seem like the wrong word, but it’s true) fun work. It’s impossible to discuss Nocturama without getting into the split between its first and second half, which shouldn’t count as […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 9, 2016 -
TIFF 2016: Five Questions for ARQ Writer/Director Tony Elliott
Orphan Black screenwriter Tony Elliott makes his feature debut with the time-twisting dystopian thriller ARQ, premiering today at the Toronto International Film Festival. Employing the now venerable time-loop trope, ARQ features a couple trying to figure out why their world is repeating, and what that has to do with the giant multi-national they were both involved with. Below, Elliott talks about his various cinematic inspirations, what he learned from writing Orphan Black, and how he made a futuristic science fiction film on a very low budget. Filmmaker: Your short film, Entangled, dealt, in part, with quantum physics. Tell me about […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 9, 2016 -
TIFF 2016: Five Questions for The Levelling Director Hope Dickson Leach
In 2007, Hope Dickson Leach landed in the pages of Filmmaker Magazine as part of our annual 25 New Faces list. Her darkly comic brother-sister relationship drama, The Dawn Chorus — about siblings who recreate the plane crash that killed their parents — had been tearing up the festival circuit, and the Columbia Film School grad was developing a feature about a teenage girl who blames Princess Diana for her parents’ divorce. Dickson Leach had been working as an assistant for Todd Solondz on his film Palindromes, and her work was occasionally thought of as having the same satiric stripe. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 8, 2016 -
Ten Films Not to Overlook at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival kicks off today, and I’m flying up this weekend for what is probably my 20th or so trip. Managing Editor Vadim Rizov arrived yesterday, and he’s already posted his first Critic’s Notebook, a “Zero Edition” in that it surveys four Toronto selections that have premiered elsewhere. As for me, I’ll continue my tradition of forgoing the traditional curtain raiser, focusing instead on ten or so films, mostly premiering American independents, that either I have a strong feeling that you shouldn’t miss or else have some element — director, cast or simply catalog write-up — that […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 8, 2016 -
TIFF Critic’s Notebook 0: The Salesman, Aquarius, Things to Come, Elle
This first dispatch cheats a bit, as will the next few: there was an embarrassment of riches this year in NYC as far as pre-TIFF/long-lead screenings go, so I started writing up the festival before actually getting there to give myself a head start — today’s dispatch, hitting before the festival technically kicks off, digs into some of the Cannes/Berlin titles that are crammed into marathon competitive P&I slots on day one proper. This is my first year attending TIFF, and as excited as I am to finally be attending, it’s inevitable that doing daily coverage will take its toll. Local color perhaps […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 7, 2016 -
Missy Mazzoli, Royce Vavrek, and James Darrah On Their Opera Adaptation of Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves
Lars von Trier’s fantastically wrenching 1996 film Breaking the Waves has been adapted into a new opera by composer Missy Mazzoli, librettist Royce Vavrek and director James Darrah. Excerpts from the opera will be performed this coming Monday, September 12, at the Guggenheim Museum and then the opera itself will officially premiere in an Opera Philadelphia production in Philadelphia from Thursday, September 22 through Saturday, October 1. At I Care if You Listen, Mazzoli and Vavrek discussed their adaptation. From Vavrek: I have loved von Trier’s film since I first saw it at the age of fourteen. I can remember […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 6, 2016
