By Ali Moosavi. [Hilary Swank’s character] is not a person who’s grieving the way that we think she should when we meet her…. It’s very easy for us to think that’s not how she should be feeling and grieving. I think in a movie about grief that was a compelling […]
Ukraine, Pre-Invasion: Maryna Vroda on Stepne
By Yun-hua Chen. The shooting took place before the full invasion by Russia and just before the pandemic started. When we arrived in Kiev, we had to go through special pandemic control measures. Everything was shut down. We were lucky to be able to finish the shooting, but then for […]
For the “God Jean-Luc”: Thomas Imbach on Say God Bye
By Yun-hua Chen. I was already under the spell of Godard. I thought, why not just start in my home country as a self-taught filmmaker?” From his teenage years, Swiss filmmaker Thomas Imbach was ensnared by Godard’s allure. Say God Bye, his latest documentary, chronicles his journey embarked upon with […]
Rescuing Girls from the Taliban: Marie Margolius on Ayenda (Future)
By Ali Moosavi. For these girls it was such an intense month of failed attempts, sleepless nights, terrifying moments that at the end was sort of a blur. While they have memories of how they felt in those moments, it was on me to figure out the timeline. I had […]
Starting from Scratch: Asmae ElMoudir on The Mother of All Lies (Kadib Abyad)
By Yun-hua Chen. For the story that I wanted to tell, there were no pictures and no proofs of what happened. I just started with one picture, and I finished with 500 hours of footage. I wanted to tell the story, but how I tell this story should be different.” […]
In the World of Pre-Code: Geoffrey O’Brien on Arabian Nights of 1934
By William Blick. My novel is not so much talk about these movies as a story that inhabits their world, as if in the mind of a young spectator – an intelligent adolescent, say, old enough to have a growing awareness of the movies’ frequent unreality and still young enough […]
A Commodified Future: Sophie Barthes on The Pod Generation
By Ali Moosavi. When I wrote this film I had no idea [that the advance of AI] would happen so fast…. We have to talk about it and raise the questions; is that the world that we want?” Writer-director Sophie Barthes was born in France but grew up in South […]
Into the Universe: Filmmaker Daphné Baiwir on King on Screen
By Leo Collis. “I really wanted to give the audience the feeling that they were entering the Stephen King universe.” The chances are, whether knowingly or not, you’ve seen a Stephen King adaptation on screen. The prolific author from Portland, Maine, has written over 50 books, and he has inspired […]
Collective Catharsis: An Interview with Cyril Aris on Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano
By Yun-hua Chen. For me the process of making this film allowed me to digest my feelings and experience as a means of catharsis on a collective level with the film crew….” On 4th August 2020, a catastrophic explosion devastated the port of Beirut due to 2,570 tons of ammonium […]
“Rejecting Reality”: Mary Dauterman on Booger
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. I come from a commercial background. I’m mostly directing pieces where everyone looks perfect…. I did not want Booger to feel like that at all. It’s raw and disgusting and grimy.” At its most placid, depictions of grief on-screen veer away from excessive physical displays. Gentle weeping […]