Filmmaker is happy to share the official trailer for Blow Up My Life, the debut feature from co-writers, directors and producers Ryan Dickie and Abigail Horton. The duo appeared on our 25 New Faces of Film list in 2016 with their production outfit New Media Ltd. alongside their collaborator Mike Anderson. The film has screened at the Austin Film Festival, Chattanooga Film Festival, Cucalorus Film Festival and Harlem International Film Festival, where it won Best Film. The film stars Jason Selvig (of the political satire comedy duo The Good Liars) and Kara Young (I’m a Virgo). Co-starring are Davram Stiefler (Selvig’s The Good Liars […]
The great actor of the stage and screen, Ron Cephas Jones died on August 19, 2023, at the age of 66. On this episode from 2020, he details the value of a true collaborative relationship with the director, why the script never leaves his side in preproduction, talks about what it was like to slowly build “William” on This Is Us through many seasons of that show, and takes us back to his early days at LAByrinth theater in New York City to explain how Philip Seymour Hoffman forever changed his approach to work, plus much more! This is an expanded version […]
The Sundance Institute announces today 23 projects that have been selected for the 2023 Documentary Fund, which provides unrestricted grant funding totaling just over $1,000,000 for filmmakers from around the globe. Among this year’s recipients, six projects are in development, 14 are in production and three are in post-production. Grants are made possible by the Open Society Foundations, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Gucci and the Kendeda Fund. Highlights among 2023 grantees are Looking at Ourselves directed by Oscar and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Lourdes Portillo, Adam’s Apple directed by artist and filmmaker Amy Jenkins, Untitled Uvalde Documentary by Anayansi […]
The following interview was originally published during our Sundance 2023 coverage and is being republished today ahead of birth/rebirth hitting theaters via IFC Films and Shudder this weekend. — Editor The narrative kernel of birth/rebirth, Laura Moss’s debut feature, was originally planted in the writer-director’s mind 20 years ago. The filmmaker (and former EMT) was creatively stirred after reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and feeling that its interest in unnatural procreation could translate well to an all-female retelling. As the decades passed, Moss began negotiating integral facets of their identity—namely coming out as non-binary and becoming increasingly convinced they would never have […]
A breakout at Sundance, Berlinale and New Directors/New Films this year, Chilean-Serbian writer-director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s debut feature Mutt is as scrappy and charming as its canine title. Following a frenzied 24 hours in the life of New York trans man Feña (Lío Mehiel, the first trans actor to win the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting at Sundance), Mutt explores the constant micro-aggressions that trans people face daily—even in a supposedly hyper-tolerant locale, especially from loved ones—and the connections and community that make these encounters sting a little bit less. Even when Feña faces his capricious ex-boyfriend, moody tween […]
Action director Lawrence Ribeiro has appeared in Filmmaker‘s pages before, writing about pre-viz’ing a fight scene and stunt training. Recently he has been directing a series of car chase short films, with the latest, Part Deux: The Chase, racking up 1.5 million views on YouTube. As he writes, these days he’s “working to expand Action Realism with upcoming projects that marry speed and movement with legendary talents in music and sound.” Here, in a conversation submitted by production company Art & Action Productions, he answers questions about the film, which can also be watched below. What was the purpose behind […]
Film at Lincoln Center announces today the Spotlight lineup for the 61st New York Film Festival, taking place from September 29 through October 15. The full spotlight slate arrives shortly after FLC announced that the North American premiere of Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro will be presented at a Spotlight Gala event at David Geffen Hall on October 2. Highlights include world premieres of Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s co-directed episodic effort The Curse and Garth Davis’s adaptation of Iain Reid’s novel Foe, starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal. Other notable selections are Harmony Korine’s infrared-shot AGGRO DR1FT, which will […]
These interviews were recorded prior to the SAG/AFTRA strike, in June 2023, as part of the Tribeca Festival. On this special episode of Back To One, actors Sophia Lillis, Hannah Gross and Michael Cera talk about their work in writer/director Dustin Guy Defa’s wonderful new film The Adults. We get a glimpse into each of their general preparation processes before doing a deep dive into their work on this actor-centric production. They each talk about how they built the reality of their complex sibling relationship, why the songs and dances that play such a big part in their characters’ past feel […]
“Have you ever seen Romanian TikToks?” It’s a torrid afternoon in Locarno and Radu Jude and I are sitting in a container repurposed as an interview booth, a couple of days after the premiere of his latest, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. Social media play a prominent role in the film, an electrifying snapshot of life in the 21st century designed to both immortalize our back-to-front digital zeitgeist and dissect its textures. A collage straddling black comedy and road movie, Do Not Expect centers on Angela (Ilinca Manolache), an overworked production assistant whose company […]
Stanley Nelson and Valerie Scoon’s Sound of the Police is an exhaustive exploration of the oppositional dynamics between African Americans and law enforcement, from slavery right up to today. Through a wealth of archival imagery, interviews with academics, authors and assorted deep thinkers of various backgrounds and colors as well as an ear-catching soundtrack (indeed the doc’s title is a nod to rapper KRS-One’s 1993 anti-police brutality anthem “Sound of da Police,” which serves as a sort of sonic exclamation point throughout the ABC News Studios doc), the veteran filmmakers make a compelling case that any relationship built on the […]