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… Read more
In making my Watergate historical fiction film 18½, I always knew that coming up with a consistent musical soundtrack was going to be essential for balancing the tone of a film that swings from comedy to thriller to drama at breakneck speed. One genre of music, and indeed one song, “Brasília Bella,” is the key to unlocking not only how our team navigated the tones and themes of the film, but also reflects the scale and scope of making an indie film at the high point of a global pandemic. Around 2018, I started working on the script for 18½ […]
Several years back, Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp traveled with friends to attend an out of town wedding. Opting to scrimp on lodging costs, the duo shared a crowded hotel room with four other friends. Slate just happened to be the only girl in the group, which led to her adopting a “teeny-tiny” voice to communicate her comparative petiteness to the other men in the room. The voice, a running joke for the rest of the weekend, became the eventual creative spark that would launch a web series, children’s books and feature-length film released by A24. Soon thereafter, the first […]
Two European families—one Danish, one Dutch—meet during a picturesque Italian vacation in Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil. Their bond is immediate, and soon enough the Dutch couple enthusiastically invite the Danes to visit them in Holland. The gesture is friendly enough, but the sincerity of the statement isn’t necessarily taken at face value. Shortly after the Danes—Bjørn (Morten Burian), Louisa (Sidsel Siem Koch) and their daughter Agnes (Liva Forsberg)—return to their well-kept abode, they receive a postcard in the mail. As it turns out, the Dutch family was completely serious about their offer, inviting them to visit their home in […]
When 16-year-old Julius Tate, Jr. was killed during a SWAT raid by undercover Columbus police officers in December of 2018, citizens swiftly gathered to protest the unjust killing of a child. One year later, during an anniversary vigil mourning Tate’s loss, Ingrid Raphaël, co-creator of No Evil Eye and Film Futura, and Melissa Gira Grant, a New York-based reporter covering police brutality, came together to co-direct and collaborate on They Won’t Call It Murder, a documentary short from Field of Vision that captures the enduring grief and activism that surviving families of police violence undertake. The film, embedded above, makes […]
With the Sundance Native Lab having returned to a (hybrid) in-person model for the first time in two years, Filmmaker asked 2022 fellows to reflect on their recent experiences through short diary entries. Read the rest of the 2022 cohort’s responses. It’s an interesting thought process trying to find the right words to describe my time at the Sundance Film Festival’s Native Film Lab. From the beginning. there was an obvious feeling of kismet, an almost too good to be true energy to have when going into any creative development lab, let alone one from an institute like Sundance. But I guess […]
With the Sundance Native Lab having returned to a (hybrid) in-person model for the first time in two years, Filmmaker asked 2022 fellows to reflect on their recent experiences through short diary entries. Read the rest of the 2022 cohort’s responses. Sundance Native Lab was a transformative time that deeply reaffirmed my practice, giving me confidence in my work that I never had before. A huge part of it was being grounded by other Indigenous writers in my cohort and in the care of such amazing leaders such as Moi—I felt I was in a safe space to share my script in its […]