Zola
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Hits and Misses, Pandemic Edition 2.0: Anthony Kaufman Breaks Down Six Sundance 2020 Films’ Theatrical Releases
According to Box Office Mojo, our contemporary plague ended on June 14, 2021—the last day the label “COVID-19 Pandemic” was included on its daily box office reporting. But don’t tell that to anyone trying to release a film in the second half of 2021, as viral variants spread widely across America, plunging the hopes of many filmmakers and distributors. Welcome to Pandemic: Year 2. The merciless persistence of the coronavirus and its wide-ranging impact on theatrical moviegoing and home viewing habits became more entrenched over the past several months—with indies on the losing end of the stick. Struggling to gain […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Jan 18, 2022 -
Back to One, Episode 183: Riley Keough
The Girlfriend Experience put Riley Keough on the radar, and she’s been giving us multi-layered, deeply rooted, captivating performances ever since, mostly in indie films like American Honey, Under The Silver Lake, The House That Jack Built, and now this year’s Zola, where she brilliantly walks the line of authentic nuance and absurdity in the role of Stefani. In this episode, she talks about the touchy endeavor of building the right approach for that character with director Janicza Bravo, the importance of knowing when to tighten up on prep or leave it loose, why she hates auditioning, how her spirituality […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Dec 14, 2021 -
“The Story Was Simultaneously Engaging, Humorous and Stressful”: Editor Joi McMillon on Zola
Janicza Bravo’s Zola is a story that was originally chronicled in 144 tweets by a woman named A’Ziah “Zola” King. The Twitter thread chronicled a high-anxiety experience that Zola had while traveling in Florida with a friend, wherein she becomes her unofficial madame, encounters her hysterical boyfriend Jarrett and finds herself in the middle of a kidnapping scenario. Bravo’s adaptation takes the straightforward yet gripping narrative of a sequence of tweets and heightens the stakes by playing with perspective. Editor Joi McMillon talks about her trajectory as an editor and what enticed her to help make Zola. Filmmaker: How and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 3, 2020
