Patrick Wang
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“Sometimes You Abandon a Wrong Idea and It Comes Back to You in the Right Form”: Patrick Wang on His Four-Hour Double Feature A Bread Factory
Patrick Wang (a 25 New Face alum) takes a painstakingly nuanced, intimate approach to delicate subjects, specifically the ways in which we deal with — and don’t deal with — loss and the rippling effects in life after a death. His first feature, the breathtaking, Independent Spirit Award-nominated In the Family, and 2015’s Cannes and SXSW-screening The Grief of Others, which will finally be hitting theaters November 2nd, would make for a great marathon viewing alone. (Provided it came with a big box of Kleenex.) And now Wang has created a work that is simultaneously lighter in tone, and his […]
by Lauren Wissot on Oct 26, 2018 -
Dispatches from Sundance, Berlin, SXSW, True/False & Thessaloniki
Sundance SCOTT MACAULAY Check it out: the two top prize winners at Sundance this year, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack, both feature as central elements teenagers who stage and film their own versions of classic movies. There’s even overlap between the two films, although Moselle’s Manhattan shut-ins incline more towards Tarantino and Freddy Krueger, while Gomez-Rejon’s teen Pittsburgh auteurs shirk the Romero roots of their hometown for deep dives into the Criterion Collection. For film lovers of a certain age, both Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and The Wolfpack […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 28, 2015 -
Sharing The Grief of Others
One of 2011’s best independent films, Patrick Wang’s debut In the Family almost didn’t get discovered. After being rejected by the top festivals, Wang premiered regionally, at the Hawaii Film Festival and San Diego Asian Film Festival, before four-walling New York City’s Quad Cinema, where sterling reviews from everyone from Filmmaker to The New York Times jumpstarted a 30-plus-city DIY theatrical tour. If In the Family was one of those “out of nowhere” films, Wang is determined that not be the case for his follow-up feature. For The Grief of Others, based on the novel by Leah Hager Cohen and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2014 -
Patrick Wang’s The Grief of Others Accompanied By iBook Detailing Production Process
Patrick Wang, who made our 25 New Faces list in 2012 with the release of his debut film, In The Family, is gearing up to shoot his sophomore picture, The Grief of Others, based on the novel by Leah Hager Cohen. Starring Rachel Dratch, Wendy Moniz and Trevor St. John, the film examines the grieving process of a couple who lose their child 57 hours after his birth. In accordance with the the production process, Wang and author David Chien will maintain a regularly updated multimedia and interactive iBook entitled, “Post Script: The Making of the Film, The Grief of Others.” With […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 18, 2014 -
Shooting With John: Adam Schartoff
I was very nervous about the experience. The idea was to go upstate, about 80 or 90 miles or so north up the Hudson Valley region, to some bucolic spot and shoot guns. Originally we were supposed to shoot skeet but that equipment wasn’t available so we ended up doing target practice. A longtime gun control advocate, I was a bit at the end of my rope. It was November of 2012 and there had been close to 16 mass shootings in the U.S. up to that point including the Batman shooting and the Texas A&M shooting that summer. The […]
by Adam Schartoff on Aug 29, 2013 -
Life’s Lessons: Patrick Wang Discusses In the Family
Joey Williams almost always seems calm. He maintains a consistent position when standing, slouched slightly forward with his hands in his pockets. He looks comfortable, but also concentrated. His eyes never break focus from the person he’s addressing, and when he speaks the Tennessee-accented words drift measuredly out of one side of his mouth. Joey doesn’t command attention so much as he gradually, patiently draws it his way. Joey is the main character of Patrick Wang’s directorial debut feature, the American independent film In the Family (2011), which will be released on Blu-ray and DVD this Tuesday. The general contractor, […]
by Aaron Cutler on Jun 21, 2013 -
PHOTOBLOGGING THE “25 NEW FACES” IN TACOMA
The funny thing about film festivals is that there never seems to be enough time to talk about the films you’ve just seen. Distribution strategies, yes, industry gossip, most definitely, but the actual creative decisions and approaches involved in making the films themselves – barely! So the Grand Cinema’s mini-festival celebrating Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in Tacoma, WA, last month felt like a truly rare treat. Bringing together 14 of the actors and filmmakers or filmmaking teams on the list, including myself and Katherine Fairfax Wright, my directing partner on Call Me Kuchu, The Grand Cinema scheduled […]
by Malika Zouhali-Worrall on Sep 5, 2012 -
HAMMER TO NAIL REVIEW: “IN THE FAMILY”
(In The Family opens at the Quad Cinema on Friday, November 4, 2011, after recently screening at the Hawaii International Film Festival and winning two richly deserved awards at the San Diego Asian Film Festival. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. *Full disclosure: I am not a film critic. I saw the film at the San Diego Asian Film Festival, where my film Surrogate Valentine was also in competition. I did not, however, have a chance to meet Patrick Wang.) Every once in a while, a movie comes out of nowhere and hits you like a ton of […]
by Dave Boyle on Nov 3, 2011
