By Yun-hua Chen. When historians talk about [the fall of the Roman Empire], it was a very slow process at the end of which Rome is not the center of Europe or the center of the world anymore. Slowly power is shifting and going somewhere else, so the end of […]
House of Darkness and the Post-#metoo Vampire Film: A Conversation with Neil LaBute
By John Talbird. I’ve dabbled in Stoker lore a few times. I adapted Dracula for the stage, I worked on a Syfy series called Van Helsing…. So I’ve tried to stretch that myth as many ways as I can and it amazingly can stretch very far as you’ve probably seen […]
Navigating History and Audience: An Interview with Ari Folman on Where is Anne Frank (2021)
By Yun-hua Chen. The biggest challenge was how to portray the last seven months of Anne Frank’s life into images that can be accessible to children without going graphically too deep in terms of what really happened. This is how I found the solution through a lot of parallel visual […]
At a Concentration Camp, Two Women in Love: Magnus Gertten on Nelly & Nadine
By N. Buket Cengiz. “It was a mission that felt almost impossible, which is a good thing for a documentary filmmaker.” Once, Nelly Mousset-Vos is a successful classical singer, and Nadine Hwang, the daughter of the Chinese ambassador to Spain, lives in the bohemian circles in Paris. On the Christmas […]
Finding That Simple Place: An Interview with Katie Holmes on Directing Alone Together
By Matthew Sorrento. It was important to show the true experience of what happened [during the pandemic], which was New York thriving, it seemed, then, all of the sudden, complete shutdown – just disbelief that something like that can happen so quickly to a city that brings so much joy […]
Georgia in Transformation: Ioseb ‘Soso’ Bliadze and Taki Mumladze on A Room of My Own (KVIFF 2022)
By Yun-hua Chen. When we were writing the script, I was thinking that it might be very hard to finance this film. When we applied for some funds, they are more interested in other topics than topics about young people. In Georgia, young people are radically different from their parents […]
The Future of the Outdoor Experience: An Interview with April Wright on Back to the Drive-in
By Ali Moosavi. Most of the filmmakers that we consider greats talk about how they fell in love with cinema by going to see films at the drive-in or going to see them at movie palaces. We might have a generation now that feels different about cinema because they have […]
Collective War Trauma and Moments of Fragility: An Interview with Hirotoshi Takeoka on Adamiani (2021)
By Yun-hua Chen. After the Chechen Wars, many changes happened. Refugees and guerrilla fighters from Chechnya had a major impact on the Islamic faith of the Kist people in Pankisi. Leila and her daughter, Mariam, represent these two generations before and after the Chechen Wars.” Adamiani, screened at the international […]
Language and Love: An Interview with Filmmaker Tomasz Wasilewski on Fools (KVIFF 2022)
By Yun-hua Chen. This film is also about motherhood, mutual love, becoming a mother again when you are a very mature woman, loneliness, and all those difficult emotions which are so powerful in this film and our life. I did not want the confirmation of the taboo to be the […]
Terror and Trauma: Michael Shannon and Filmmaker Spencer Squire on Abandoned
By Ali Moosavi. I found this character tragic and moving. He had such a traumatic event happen to him and he couldn’t get free of it…. I think that’s something people can identify with….” –Michael Shannon There is a long tradition of movies about a woman or a man psychologically […]