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“We Do Believe the Audience is More Intelligent Than the Industry Thinks: Producer Sylvain Corbeil on the Cannes-Premiering Peak Everything
Peak Everything
Since founding Metafilms over two decades ago, Montreal-based producer Sylvain Corbeil has become a prolific and respected pillar of Quebec’s independent film scene, collaborating with filmmakers whose bold and idiosyncratic visions have served to bolster the place of modern Canadian… Read more
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Poster Premiere: ACID 2025 Selection A Light That Never Goes Out
We’re pleased to premiere the poster for ACID 2025 selection A Light That Never Goes Out. From the Cannes section’s website: Lauri-Matti Parppei, who has recorded several albums in a parallel life, takes us to their hometown in Northern Finland, a place where people speak little and depression is a taboo – this is Pauli’s illness, as he returns home to heal his wounds. With a melancholic tone, the film, through its precise, no-frills directing style, weaves its story like a musical score. Pauli rejects success and returns to life thanks to a chaotic lineup of outcasts. Friendship, stronger than anything, […]
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Filmmaker Magazine Presents Swoon and Monsoon Wedding at New York’s Paris Theater
Filmmaker‘s monthly series at New York’s Paris Theater, Filmmaker Magazine Presents, continues in June with two new events coupled with in-person conversations. On Monday, June 2, the Paris will welcome director Tom Kalin and producer Christine Vachon for a Q&A following a screening of 1992’s New Queer Cinema highlight Swoon. Kalin co-wrote and directed this stylish take on the infamous murder trial of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr., a case that also provided inspiration for the stage play Rope, later adapted for the screen by Alfred Hitchcock. Swoon will show on a 35mm print courtesy of Kalin and the film’s director of photography, Ellen Kuras. On Monday, […]
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“We Have More in Common Than We Think”: Mel Sangyi Zhao on Her Student Short Film Showcase Winner Return to Youth
For her California Institute of the Arts MFA thesis film, Mel Sangyi Zhao decided to travel back to her Chinese hometown of Chengdu and cast her mother in the lead role. The resultant film, Return to Youth, follows a retired dancer as she navigates the pressures of misogyny, ageism and a budding romance with a man several decades her junior. Recently pitched with the prospect of undergoing a vaginal rejuvenation surgery, the elegant Bing (Xiaobing Zhao) laughs off the procedure as preposterous. Only when her cohort of friends begin to seriously discuss their interest does she understand that she, too, […]
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Six Derelict Movie Theaters That Inspired Joshua Erkman’s Horror Thriller, A Desert
With Joshua Erkman’s eerie horror/thriller, A Desert, which centers around a photographer lost in a Southwestern desert while on an expedition to photograph its abandoned movie theaters, in theaters now, the director presents here six inspirational photographs he shot on his own early research trip to the film’s locations. — Editor The original seed of A Desert was the photographer character, Alex Clark. I’ve long been obsessed with photography, and before movies took ahold and bent my brain, I had aspirations of being a photographer. Before I even had an idea of what A Desert was going to be about, […]
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Sundance Institute Announces 2025 Directors, Screenwriters and Native Labs Fellows
The Native Lab, the signature initiative of Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program, kicks off in person today through May 3 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Directors Lab, a core component of the Institute’s Feature Film Program, returns for its 45th year from June 1–16 in Estes Park, Colorado. Fellows will then participate in the Screenwriters Lab held online from June 24–27. Sundance Institute’s signature labs offer filmmakers a nurturing, immersive environment to develop their projects and refine their artistic voice under the guidance of accomplished creative advisors. This year’s Native Lab supports four fellows and two artists-in-residence. The Directors Lab […]
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“We Literally Burned Our Actual Set”: Writer-Director Ryan Coogler and Producers Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian on Sinners
Even before its smashing opening weekend theatrical success, Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s first original directorial outing since his 2013 indie hit Fruitvale Station, was knocking loud on the box office doors. Early reviews praised the film’s unique genre-bending vision, weaving vampire lore and Irish songs into a 1932-set horror-musical dramatic thriller about identical Black twin brothers leaving behind their Chicago gangster lives to return to their sharecropper roots in the Mississippi Delta and start their own juke joint—that is, before the vampires come a-seducing. Before that, Smoke and Stack, twins played by Michael B. Jordan in a bravura dual performance, throw […]
