Sundance Film Festival 2025
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Sundance 2025: BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, The Virgin of the Quarry Lake, Atropia
After the unscheduled drama of BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions’ abrupt removal from Sundance’s lineup, financier Participant Media’s attorney’s open letter accusing public director Kahlil Joseph of creating a secret cut as justification for said removal and the feature’s reinstatement in the lineup thanks to a new buyer, the film finally screened with the now-very-known context that somewhere in there is an extra minute not in the Participant-cleared cut. I can’t imagine where; this sprawling 113-minute essay film is all tangents and free association, to the point where it seems like you could subtract or add an infinite amount of material […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 27, 2025 -
“Moviemaking on a Hyper-Condensed Timeline”: Producer Laurel Thomson on Serious People
Co-directors Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson made a work of autofiction about the former’s expectant fatherhood and work-life balance in Serious People, about a music video director who hires a lookalike to take his place at work while his wife is pregnant. Serious People is also Laurel Thomson’s first feature film as a producer. She discusses what made this film so different to produce from other films she has worked on and the ensuing “baptism by fire” to get the film ready for Sundance, where it screens as part of the NEXT section. See all responses to our annual Sundance first-time producer […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“Actualize a Dream We’ve Had Since Our Early Twenties” | Pasqual Guttierez and Ben Mullinkosson, Serious People
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? Pasqual Guttierez: To me, the most memorable aspect of this film was not one specific scene or shoot day. It was the collective experience as a whole. The film features my wife, my best friends and myself, and we play versions of ourselves. While the film was always set to be a comedy, I […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“Letting Brooklyn be a Constant but Subtle Presence”: DP Martim Vian on Love, Brooklyn
The U.S. Dramatic Competition entry Love, Brooklyn follows the lives of three Brooklynites as they navigate the trials and travails of everyday life. The film is the debut film by Rachael Handler, who has directed episodes for a number of streaming series. Serving as director of photography on Love, Brooklyn is Martim Vian. Below, Vian goes into detail about the film’s cinematographic principles and bringing its setting to life. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? See all responses to […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“A Phenomenal Act That Was Truly Unprecedented” | Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni, Cutting Through Rocks
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? The most significant day that we will always remember from the film is when our protagonist, Sara, who was newly elected as a councilwoman in her Iranian village, was celebrating the fact that she was able to create a setting where women in the community could share ownership of their homes with their husbands. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“I Got to Have a Korean Wedding” | Andrew Ahn, The Wedding Banquet
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? I will always remember the morning of our first day filming the Korean wedding sequence of our movie. My parents were on set, stationed at video village with our producers. It was Youn Yuh-jung’s birthday (we surprised her with a cake at lunch). The set dec team and I fussed over the wedding altar, trying […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“I Looked Over and She Was Weeping” | Rachael Abigail Holder, Love, Brooklyn
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? Ten years from now, the memory that will come to mind when I think of the making of Love, Brooklyn is in post production. I moved to LA to pursue this career back in 2011. I knew no one but my cousin Anakela who is not in the business. She lived in a beautiful […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“The Day Another Film Fell Apart” | Charlie Shackleton, Zodiac Killer Project
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? The most significant day in the making of Zodiac Killer Project was the day another film fell apart. It was August 2022, and I was sitting in Maggie’s Diner in Vallejo, California, having spent the morning scouting locations for a true crime documentary about the Zodiac Killer. As I ordered my lunch, I received […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“We All Danced Together” | Laura Casabé, The Virgin of the Quarry Lake
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? We had gone through some very difficult days during the shoot. The assistant director had to leave the production, and several other issues arose that made us, as a team, rethink how to organize ourselves. The day after the assistant director left went very poorly—we didn’t even manage to film a scene. That’s why […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“It Was More Pointedly a Satirical Look at …’The Peace-Building Industry'”: Amber Fares on her Sundance-Premiering Coexistence, My Ass!
Amber Fares’s Sundance-premiering Coexistence, My Ass! takes its fabulous title from a one-woman show of the same name, a piece developed (at Harvard of all places) by the doc’s star, “activist-comedian” Noam Shuster Eliassi. The daughter of an Iranian Jewish mother and a Romanian Jewish father, Shuster Eliassi grew up in “Oasis of Peace” (Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam), a utopian community purposely comprised equally of Jews and Palestinians, where she would become “the literal poster child for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” and eventually a co-director of the UN’s Interpeace organization by the time she was in her early 20s. But then […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 26, 2025
