By Yun-hua Chen. What’s important is understanding that pain cannot be compared. We can’t measure how someone else’s pain impacts them versus our own. Empathy is key.” It’s an unexpected encounter during a summer in Recife, Brazil. Kai, a tourist from Taiwan, finds herself alone after being abandoned by her […]
A Producer’s Journey, from Tehran to Hollywood – Barry Navidi on Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness
By Ali Moosavi. I always wanted to be a director but John Huston said to me, look you’ve got the passion and the desire to make movies; why don’t you become a creative producer? This way you don’t have to always seek for jobs as director. The producer creates the […]
Against Mechanization: Adam Elliot on Memoir of a Snail (CIFF 2024)
By Jonathan Monovich. It’s always tempting to speed up the process and save money by using CGI, but I think we’re at a period where we’re drowning in CGI. Now, with the advent of AI, I think stop motion has never been appreciated as much as it is now.” —Adam […]
Made in Chicago: Andrew Davis on his Career and Disturbing the Bones (CIFF 2024)
By Jonathan Monovich. Born in Chicago’s South Side, Davis understands exactly where his characters should be, when they should be there, and why they should be there.” Throughout his career, Andrew Davis found a way to make Chicago the city of spectacle on the big screen. There have been plenty […]
Complicated Feelings – John Bleasdale on The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick
By M. Sellers Johnson. A lot of the people who worked for Malick have a lot of affection for him and want to protect him. They have this complicated feeling that they’re really keen to tell stories but they don’t want to be seen to be spilling the beans. Having […]
“Hitchcock is Grammar”: Mark Cousins on My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
By Jonathan Monovich. A lot of people talk about the scary Hitchcock, the manipulative Hitchcock, or the anti-feminist Hitchcock, but in looking at his films I wanted to see what really were the themes and where the humanity was in his work.” Mark Cousins Mark Cousins has dedicated his life […]
Shedding Old Skin: Ramon and Silvan Zürcher on The Sparrow in the Chimney
By Yun-hua Chen. For me, the third installment of the trilogy is about liberation and breaking out of certain emotional or psychological prisons, shedding old skin so that new skin can grow. The sparrow is important because of this potential for freedom and flight.” —Ramon Zürcher From cat to spider, […]
Space and Its Limitations: Yang Zhengfan on Stranger
By Yun-hua Chen. I was initially attracted to the concept of space, but space brought many limitations, which I actually like because they encourage exploring more possibilities.” Composed of snippets that capture different hotel rooms inhabited by various “strangers”, Chicago-based Chinese director Zhengfan Yang is acutely sensitive to how spaces […]
To Fully Live Out Their Lives: Theo Cuthand on The Lost Art of the Future
By Àbigaïl Yartey. When I was starting out as a queer indigenous filmmaker in the 1990s, there wasn’t a lot of us making work. Since then, there has been a lot of people who’ve gotten into this arena….for me it was wanting to bring back queer elders, or queer people who […]
The Rhythm of Real Life: Michał Chmielewski on Roving Woman
By Savina Petkova. I think in the long take, we observe the rhythm of real life…. if we would cut between different emotional states, it would be artificial.” It would be reductive to call Roving Woman, the debut feature by Polish filmmaker Michał Chmielewski simply a road movie. That it […]