Rania Attieh & Daniel Garcia
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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 -
Five Women Directors Discuss Their Art and Craft at the Berlin Film Festival
I walked out after the first 15 minutes of 50 Shades of Grey. Granted, I thought I was walking into a meeting, so this unexpected private screening caught me off guard. I was also thrown by the venue’s attempt to mirror the film’s billion-dollar company, “Grey Enterprises.” Christian Grey impersonators literally barked orders and insults at the arriving guests. This did not get me in the mood. Also, the film was dubbed in German (which is not to say that I would have preferred to suffer through it in English). Somewhere between the 15 minutes of 50 shades of folly […]
by Taylor Hess on Feb 20, 2015 -
Sundance 2015: Unexpected and H.
There are two worthwhile concepts that skirt the heavily sketched plot of Kris Swanberg’s Unexpected: working motherhood and the white savior. Unfortunately, both are dropped just as soon as they are addressed in this saccharine tale of an unlikely, intergenerational friendship between two pregnant women. Sam Abbott, who has the great fortune of being played by the appealing Cobie Smulders, is a science teacher at an inner city Chicago high school that’s set to close at the end of the semester. Unexpectedly pregnant (requisite peeing, WebMD scenes and all), Sam marries her boyfriend John (Anders Holm) at City Hall to the chagrin of her overbearing — […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 27, 2015 -
Five Questions for Recommended by Enrique‘s Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia
Director Rania Attieh was born in Tripoli, Lebanon, and her partner Daniel Garcia grew up in South Texas. Their first feature together, Okay, Enough, Goodbye crisscrossed Attieh’s hometown, canvassing 30 locations in 40 days to create a story, they say, that is a “love/hate relationship with the city itself.” So, after that feature won plaudits on the festival circuit — and landed the two on Filmmaker‘s 2011 25 New Faces list — it seems only appropriate that they head to Texas for their follow-up. Premiering tonight at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Recommended by Enrique is described as “a tale […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 13, 2014 -
OK, Enough, Goodbye To Be Released Via Vyer Films
Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia, two of Filmmaker‘s 2011 “25 New Faces,” have found a home for their debut feature, OK, Enough, Goodbye, at Vyer Films. An unusual coming of age tale, Ok, Enough, Goodbye centers on a protagonist who is effectively old enough for a mid-life crisis. The aforementioned, nameless 40-year old man lives in Tripoli, Lebanon, with his mother, having long relinquished any prospects for independence. But when his mother abruptly leaves, the man is left with nothing but his surroundings. As he struggles to find his bearings adrift in the small city, he must keep his mother’s absence a […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 6, 2013 -
Rania Attieh & Daniel Garcia
“Like a lot of partner dynamics, a healthy amount of arguing begins most of our working situations,” write Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia from Karlovy Vary, where their evocative debut feature, Ok, Enough, Goodbye, is receiving its European premiere. “There is yelling and calling each other names. Then we settle down and begin actually working. Perhaps what makes our process work is the fact that we are completely unafraid to be brutally honest with each other about our opinions regarding each other’s ideas.” Attieh, born in Tripoli, Lebanon, and Garcia, from South Texas, met in Texas in an undergrad drawing […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2011
