There are plenty of North American filmmakers influenced by the giants of international cinema. These filmmakers import stylistic references, different tones and rhythms, perhaps key collaborators, such as a cinematographer, to films that…
Blue Sun Palace, Constance Tsang’s first feature, is a migrant story that’s vividly attuned to the temporal and emotional dislocation of those stranded far away from home. Set in Flushing, Queens—where the director grew up—the film follows…
“Please stop me if any of the terms don’t make sense.” A few days before his feature debut, Eephus, will premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight, Carson Lund is sitting on a rooftop terrace in Cannes and worrying I may not catch all the…
Harmony Korine’s AggroDr1ft unfurls through sheets of kaleidoscopic color — neon shades of gold, aqua and red — that ripple and pulse, achieving almost an intelligence of their own as they add expressionistic textures to the film’s Miami…
I somehow lost my Sundance 2024 hat before arriving in Cannes. I was forced to take it off for the automated passport control in Paris, as it would’ve obscured my face too much for the fancy camera technology that only worked for about…
Now that Megalopolis has premiered, nothing has actually changed. The film is a self-consciously impractical act that few would care nearly as much about if it weren’t very publicly known to have cost $120 million of Francis Ford Coppola’s…
“Last year, as you know, we had a few polemics,” admitted Cannes General Delegate Thierry Fremaux at the opening of the 77th edition on Tuesday. “This year we decided to host a festival without polemics to make sure that the main interest…
In The Damned, Roberto Minervini embeds us with Union Army soldiers ranging across the Western front in 1862, far from the battlegrounds in the East but no less at risk. But when you direct a Civil War movie in 2020s America, it can be…
At dinner my first night at this year’s Cannes, a friend asked our waiter if this was his restaurant’s busiest time of year. Not even close; that would be MIPIM, “the world’s leading real estate market event,” taking place in March and…
Since he was last on the podcast (Ep. 112), Tom Pelphrey has been nominated for an Emmy for his work on Ozark, he’s had juicy roles on Outer Range and David E. Kelly’s Love and Death, and now Kelly has given Pelphrey perhaps his most…
Amidst wi-fi and cellular outages, a threatened workers’ strike, and dialogue around the #MeToo movement in France, the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is underway. For Filmmaker, Vadim Rizov and Blake Williams are both back with…
Baltimore filmmakers and audiences commingled in and around the historic Parkway Theater at the physical center and symbolic heart of the city from May 2 – 5 for the 25th anniversary edition of the Maryland Film Festival (MdFF). When MdFF…
The Gotham Film & Media Institute, Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced today the nominations in seven competitive award categories for the inaugural Gotham TV Awards, recognizing a range of series, including Baby Reindeer, Ripley,…
Artist and filmmaker Alison O’Daniel appeared on Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2019 as her feature The Tuba Thieves, screening next week on Independent Lens, moved from stop-and-start production — she had been shooting the film in “bits…
The logline for Snack Shack—two teenaged best friends spend the summer of 1991 working at a community pool food stand and get up to shenanigans—suggests a hyper-generic “one crazy summer”-type coming-of-age flick, but the film…
Monica Sorelle’s debut feature Mountains is currently screening at the Seattle International Film Festival, with its final screening tomorrow, May 14, and then on the festival’s streaming platform from May 20 – 27. Mountains, the debut…
In The Conference of the Birds, the famous Persian epic written in 1177 by Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, a group of birds gather and discuss their collective journey to meet their king, the Simurgh, a mythical winged creature. In this…
“I’m so happy,” producer Park Tae-joon said at the Jeonju Cinema Project awards, one of the ceremonies indicating the festival was drawing to a close. “Every day I drank […] festival drinking.” Park’s admission was funny and honest, the…
MEMORY, the L.A.-based production and now distribution company featured in Filmmaker‘s 2016 25 New Faces list announced today the release plans for New Strains, a microbudget, camcorder-shot pandemic comedy from a pair of filmmakers,…
Slamdance announced last week that the Slamdance Film Festival will move from Park City, Utah, where it’s been since its founding in 1995, to Los Angeles beginning with next year’s edition. The dates will shift slightly to February 20-26,…
In The Last Stop in Yuma County, an empty pump at an isolated desert gas station strands a collection of characters (including a pair of bank robbers and knife salesman Jim Cummings) at the adjoining roadside diner. Written around the…
Jeonju International Film Festival, which has become over the last two decades one of the must-go fests in East Asia, prides itself on its innovative curation. The 25th edition in 2024 was packed with film folk, especially from East and…
This year’s 31st edition of Hot Docs (April 25-May 5) was chockfull of drama, both onscreen and off. And while there were no protests (such as at IDFA) nor riot police dispatched (see Thessaloniki) there was quite an upheaval in the run up…
It’s not necessarily that, in a pathetic version of Henry Hill’s childhood desire to be a gangster, I’ve “always wanted to attend a pitch forum.” But I’ve admittedly been curious to see how this particular part of the festival-film…
Returning for its fourth edition, the experimentally-focused Prismatic Ground film festival will once again host a series of screenings across several NYC theaters and via a free streaming platform. Running from May 8 through 12, the…
The American Pavilion announced today the 36 short films selected for its 2024 Emerging Filmmaker Showcase, sponsored this year by the non-profit Gold House. From the press release: The 2024 showcase features 36 official selection films in…
“I love the feeling of the room in a packed house watching a good movie,” says writer, director and actor Al Warren on the phone from Los Angeles. “I want to model my career on that. It’s become a priority for how I approach my work. How…
Gasoline Rainbow, the seventh feature by Bill and Turner Ross, marks a return to a world of young people familiar from the brothers’s early efforts 45365 (2009) and Tchoupitoulas (2012), which centered, respectively, on residents of Sydney…
Launching in 2017 with a reissue of The Last Movie, Arbelos Films grew out of co-founders’ David Marriott, Dennis Bartok, Craig Rogers and Ei Toshinari’s experiences working at Cinelicious Pics. Since then, their slate of reissues have…
Over the past year and a half, no actor in any medium has given me more inspiration through their work than Mia Vallet. As a company member and frequent performer at the exciting NYC “loft theaters” Adult Film and The Brooklyn Center for…