Sundance Film Festival
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“It Was as if the Film Had Given Us Permission to Connect”: Director Christopher Makoto Yogi | I Was a Simple Man
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? I Was a Simple Man is a film that is inspired by my personal experiences with death in the family, and the making of the film was a way for me to confront and process these experiences. But one of the most unanticipated aspects of developing our film was that whenever someone would read the script or listen to me speak about the film, folks would immediately tell me a story about someone dear […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2021 -
“It’s Reflecting the Times but Arriving Warped”: Director Dash Shaw | Cryptozoo
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? Animation takes a long time. Cryptozoo was written and storyboarded when Obama was president. The first voice recordings were done in the early months of the Trump presidency. The final pick-up voice recordings were recorded remotely due to the pandemic. Now it premieres under Biden. During all of those years, we worked on this every day. The plan never changed, but of course everything (from painting a background, or recording a voice) happens in […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2021 -
“I Became More Interested Than Ever in Trying to Understand My Daughter’s Story”: Director Peter Nicks | Homeroom
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? The filmmaker often begins with a vision: maybe the inspiration of a song, a book, or a hot social issue. Or perhaps it is simply an extraordinary person whose story must be told. This process begins with inspiration and often yields to obsession as we go deeper into turning our inspiration into reality. And along this path it is not uncommon to meet up with that sly artist rigidity, a doppelgänger of our most […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2021 -
“The Scope of the Story Also Expanded”: Director Nanfu Wang | In the Same Breath
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? In the Same Breath is a product of 2020. The project was developed in response to events from the very beginning of the year in Wuhan, and as the year unfolded and the impact of the virus was felt just about everywhere on Earth, the scope of the story also expanded. Every new day, in my personal life as well as in the making of this film, I was forced to adapt to the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 28, 2021 -
“I Feel Like in 2020 I Was Lucky”: Director Miriam Guttmann | Seeds of Deceit
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? My middle name is Mazal, which means “luck” in Hebrew. My grandmother used to say “one needs a bit of Mazal.” I feel like in 2020 I was lucky. I was able to finish the project I had been dreaming about for 2.5 years. We worked around the challenges, we feared we might fail, but we flied! (Check back daily during the festival — new answers are uploaded on the day of each film’s […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 28, 2021 -
“Whether It’s a Refugee Crisis or a Pandemic, We Are All in This Together”: Director Jonah Poher Rasmussen | Flee
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? I was in Oslo, Norway finalizing Flee, when the Danish Prime Minister went on TV calling for a national lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I made it home to Copenhagen just before the borders closed and from there it felt like everything went into slow motion. The very final steps of finishing the film took as long as the rest of the entire production, and as all the cinemas around me had closed […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 28, 2021 -
“Box Within a Box Feeling”: DP Paul Ozgur on John and the Hole
In Pascual Sisto’s John and the Hole, John (Charlie Shotwell), seemingly unprovoked, drugs his family and tosses them into a bunker where he holds them captive. Written by Birdman co-writer Nicolás Giacobone, John and the Hole is a zoomed in look at the psychology of boyhood. DP Paul Ozgur shares his frustrations with the changing of the seasons complicating shooting and the team’s move away from romantic imagery. 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? Ozgur: When you get a script […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 1, 2021 -
Sundance Film Festival Announces its Full 2021 Program
The Sundance Institute announced today the full program — all categories! — for its 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Unspooling January 28 – February 3, the festival will occur both online, via a “feature-rich, Sundance-built online platform,” as well as, public health and safety requirements permitting, in person at Satellite Screens at venues across the country. Selected are 72 feature films from 29 countries, with 38 first-time feature filmmakers in the mix. Fourteen of the films and projects were supported in some way by Sundance Institute, and 66 features are world premieres. These films were chosen from 14,092 submissions including 3,500 feature-length films. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 15, 2020 -
Gina Duncan Announced as New Producing Director, Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Institute announced today that Gina Duncan, most recently Vice President of Film and Strategic Programming at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), will join the Sundance Film Festival in the newly-created role of Producing Director. Writes Sundance in a press release, “Duncan will integrate the artistic vision of the Festival with its practical, audience-facing elements. She’ll work with the programming team as they curate works for exhibition, and serve as a leader for creating strategic vision and decision-making on both the Sundance Film Festival and year-round public programs. Further key duties of the position: continuing to build policies […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 25, 2020 -
“A Sequel to a Film That Doesn’t Exist”: Max Barbakow on Palm Springs
Setting a record for most expensive acquisition in Sundance history, Max Barbakow’s debut feature, Palm Springs, sold jointly to Neon (theatrical) and Hulu (streaming) for a reported $17.5 mil and 69 cents (it broke the previous record by 69 cents). Early press described the film as a sci-fi twist on the 1993 comedy, Groundhog Day; trading in SNL’s Bill Murray for another alum, Andy Samberg, Barbakow welcomes the comparison. With the marketable hook firmly established (Harold Ramis meets Shane Carruth!), Palm Springs ultimately becomes a film about two strangers brought together by an agonizing event: a cringeworthy wedding in Palm Springs. […]
by Erik Luers on Jul 9, 2020
