Sundance Film Festival
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“The Film Takes Place in Two Different Worlds”: DP Klemens Hufnagl on Human Factors
Ronny Trocker’s Human Factors follows a family whisked away to their seaside vacation home in an attempt to escape work. During their stay, burglars break into the house, which drives a wedge between parents Nina and Jan. DP Klemens Hufnagl explores differentiating the worlds of Hamburg and the Belgian coast. 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? Hufnagl: As Ronny Trocker’s first feature The Eremites was a co-production with Austria, he was looking for an Austrian DP. It was […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 2, 2021 -
“It Was Just Me and the Characters in a Vacuum”: Editor Marion Hill on Ma Belle, My Beauty
Marion Hill tackles uncharted territory with her polyamorous drama Ma Belle, My Beauty. After moving to rural France, Bertie (Idella Johnson) runs into her ex Lane (Hannah Pepper-Cunningham) who she was previously in a three person relationship with alongside Bertie’s husband Fred (Lucien Guignard). Hill, also the editor of the film, reveals the personal journey that went into editing the film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Hill: I am also the writer, director and one of three producers […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 2, 2021 -
“America’s Most Incarcerated City”: Directors Ted Passon, Yoni Brook and Nicole Salazar | Philly D.A.
How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? When we began producing this docuseries in 2017, the national conversation around the role of systemic racism in the justice system was in a different place. Back then the city of Philadelphia, where we live, was immersed in a reckoning with its position as America’s most incarcerated big city. After a shocking election, Larry Krasner, an outsider committed to ending mass incarceration, took over the prosecutor’s office responsible for sending people to prison. We […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 2, 2021 -
Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook 3 (Abby Sun): El Planeta, Try Harder!, At the Ready
The mother-daughter duo in Amalia Ulman’s debut feature-length film El Planeta don’t live in the shabby glamour or reclusive dependency of Grey Gardens’ Beales, but they’re no less compelling in their affection for each other and occasional squabbles. I do find it strange my mind went to Grey Gardens, given this film represents almost its complete opposite. It’s pretty clearly fictional and scripted, though Ulman plays the main character, Leonor (or Leo for short), her real life mother Ale Ulman takes on the role of María, Leonor’s mother, and Leo has to cope with the same physical injury Ulman and […]
by Abby Sun on Feb 1, 2021 -
Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook 4 (Vadim Rizov): Users, At the Ready
On its website, XTR describes itself as “a premium nonfiction film and television studio serving the booming documentary film space.” The company is attached to eight feature titles at this year’s Sundance, all but one of which (Faya Dayi) credit the late Tony Hsieh’s name as an executive producer. The Zappos CEO died in November, nearly two months after investing $17.5 million in XTR; his name unites Ailey, At the Ready, Bring Your Own Brigade, Homeroom, Try Harder!, Rebel Hearts and Natalia Almada’s Users—the last sporting an end credits dedication in Hsieh’s memory. I haven’t seen Almada’s previous work, so can’t speak to how Users’s often enjoyably giganticist […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 1, 2021 -
“We Believed It Would Generate More Liveliness and Freedom”: DP Alex Bloom on Hive
Blerta Basholli’s Hive explores macro gender dynamics in her home country of Kosovo. Among a league of women awaiting news of their husbands, fathers and sons’ fates in the Kosovo War, Fahrije practices self-reliance and encourages other women to seek independence despite the violent patriarchal expectations of their community. DP Alex Bloom tells us why he felt it best to allow the actresses to move about unencumbered. 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? Bloom: Valon Bajgora introduced […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2021 -
“I Wanted Viewers to Meet People Before They Become News Stories”: Jessica Beshir on Faya Dayi
Filmed in the highlands of Harar, Ethiopia, Jessica Beshir’s Faya Dayi is a deeply personal project for the Mexican-Ethopian director. Having left her home city of Harar in tenth grade, the now-Brooklyn-based Beshir travelled back and forth between America and Ethiopia for a decade to spend time with family and gather material for the film, which now competes in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary section. The film provides an contemplative portrait of Harar and the people that live in and around it, using its focus on the harvest and trade of the “khat” plant—a chewable stimulant that has become the country’s […]
by Matt Turner on Feb 1, 2021 -
“We Needed a Visual Approach that Would Match the Poetry of Mr. Ailey’s Words”: Jamila Wignot on Ailey
With Jamila Wignot’s documentary Ailey opening today from NEON, we are reposting Randy Astle’s interview with the director out of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Alvin Ailey’s choreography was as powerful and muscular as it was elegant and sublime. Most dance outsiders probably come to him through his most famous work, 1960’s Revelations, which exemplifies the fierce pride of the Black community moving from slavery through baptism and into celebration. The work also includes delicate and restrained moments, such as in an early pas de deux, where a slowly raised arm contains all the beauty of a the later exultation. […]
by Randy Astle on Feb 1, 2021 -
“Forgiveness, Empathy and Healing Are Actions the World Needs Right Now”: Editor Yang-Hua Hu on Mass
Fran Kranz’s Mass is the rare film that explores the aftermath of a tragedy rather than the tragedy itself. Some years after the events of a school shooting, the parents of a victim (Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton) plan to meet the parents of the perpetrator (Reed Birney and Ann Dowd). Editor Yang-Hua Hu shares what it was like to practice restraint in the film’s edit but still maintain interest in a movie with a mostly static setting. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2021 -
“Toes the Line Between Dreams and Reality”: DP Tyler Davis on Strawberry Mansion
Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney’s surreal sci-fi romantic comedy Strawberry Mansion reimagines the dystopia as something shockingly similar to our own world: a society where even our dreams are plagued with marketing and advertisement. DP Tyler Davis shares what the team took from music videos and fantasy films like The NeverEnding Story to capture their dreamy, fantastical vision. 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? Davis: In early 2019 I met Albert Birney (one of the directors, along with Kentucker Audley, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2021
