Maya Rudolph
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I Wanted To Go Deeper Than Just a Portrait of a Band”: Rita Baghdadi on her Sundance-Premiering doc Sirens
Trying to make it as a twenty-something in a band is hard enough. But when that band is Slave to Sirens, the Middle East’s first all-female metal group, the stakes and the obstacles can seem off the charts. Which is exactly what makes Moroccan-American director and cinematographer Rita Baghdadi’s Sirens, world-premiering in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at this year’s Sundance, so engrossing. The film focuses on the band’s co-founders and guitarists Lilas and Shery, who over the course of a brisk 78 minutes navigate friendship and sexuality, artistic vision and international fame – all within the explosive confines of […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 23, 2022 -
Friend or Foe: Maggie’s Plan
Until filmmaker, novelist, and funnywoman Rebecca Miller weighed in with the invigorating Maggie’s Plan, the history of films addressing the impasse between order and randomness — in theological terms, the conflict between free will and determinism — has rested on the mature products of profound Western European minds. Bresson’s Au Hasard, Balthasar and Dreyer’s Gertrud, for example, are stark, minimalist, and melancholic, with a divine presence at the very least implied. In Miller’s movie, intellectual musings are negligible in the fate debate. Destiny, whether embraced or resisted, is built into something more palpable: the actions of her quirky characters. Her earlier […]
by Howard Feinstein on May 16, 2016
