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 […]
“Three Goodbyes”: An Interview with Celine Song on Past Lives
By Yun-hua Chen. Characters that I am trying to create are in general characters that are very thrilled to exist as who they are. So, I think this is really about not making apologies.” Exploring untaken paths and traces of human connections that feel like originating in past lives, Celine […]
Shepherding It to the Finish Line: An Interview with Russell Owen
By Leo Collis. Filmmaker Owen discusses gaining some momentum after a decade of grind. A lot can happen in 11 years. In fact, the last five years alone feels like two lifetimes. It was back in 2012, when I was a bright-eyed intern for Film International, that I first spoke […]
“Playing Innocent Would Have Meant Lying”: From the Introduction to Christian Petzold: Interviews
By Marco Abel, Aylin Bademsoy, and Jaimey Fisher. The following is an excerpt from the Introduction to our volume of interviews with German filmmaker Christian Petzold, entitled Christian Petzold: Interviews and published in the University Press of Mississippi’s Conversation with Filmmakers series. We thank UPM for permission to reprint this […]
Letting Them Be: An Interview with Ali Edwards and Sophia Castuera on August at twenty-two
By Leo Collis. “This isn’t a coming out story. This is just a story about a group of people and who they happen to love. I find that, as an artist, it was important to have Cal just be.” —Ali Edwards Navigating the world is tough at the best of […]
Digital Radicalization: An Interview with Harshad Nalwade on Follower
By Devapriya Sanyal. I wanted to understand what makes some people latch on to a leader or a cause like this to passionately.” Follower, Harshad Nalwade’s debut film which premiered at the IFFR, encapsulates the fight between Belgaum’s two main stakeholders in the state of Karnataka which has long been […]