Wavelength, a production company which describes themselves as “an award-winning film and content studio committed to developing and producing great f**king stories,” is now accepting applications for their fifth annual WAVE Grant. From the press release: The grant stands for “women at the very edge” and is devoted to helping emerging female and non-binary filmmakers of color tell their own “great f**king story.” Wavelength will select five recipients to receive a $5,000 seed grant for the production of their first short film. Applications open October 1, 2023 and will close December 1, 2023. In addition to the grant, the studio […]

The post Applications Now Open for Fifth Annual WAVE Grant for Female and Non-Binary Filmmakers of Color first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

After living undocumented in the US for 26 years, in Nowhere Near (2023), director Miko Revereza journeys back to the Philippines in an attempt to trace the source of the colonial ghosts causing his parents’ amnesia. Through an abstract odyssey into personal history à la Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, Revereza works in a range of mediums to express the borderless aesthetic of statelessness. What results is an investigative documentary layered with the narration of his own novel, floating into the mysteries of psychogeographical disconnect with superimposed images and submerged family portraits. On the day of the film’s US premiere, Revereza […]

The post Exorcising the Curse of the US: Miko Revereza on Nowhere Near first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

UFO (Untitled Film Organization) today announced the four filmmakers selected for its inaugural Short Film Lab. Bren Wyona, Kevin Xian Ming Yu, Brydie O’Connor and Tahiel Jimenez Medina will participate in an 18-month program “designed to help early-career directors advance and refine their voice and craft, while receiving project financial support, mentorship, professional development, and industry connections as part of a collaborative community.” In-person workshops will take place at Brooklyn Academy of Music, where the four will receive support and feedback from UFO co-directors, guest mentors and each other. The program supports these filmmakers through every stage of the process […]

The post UFO Announces Four Filmmakers Selected for Inaugural Short Film Lab first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Koyaanisqatsi director Godfrey Reggio returns with his first feature in a decade, Once Within a Time, opening this Friday at New York’s IFC Center from Oscilloscope Labs. In Filmmaker‘s Fall, 2014 issue, Reggio, co-director Jon Kane and DP Trish Govoni discussed the “perfect image” of his last feature, Visitors, which was comprised of just 74 black-and-white shots, each running 70 or so seconds. Made during the COVID-19 pandemic, the animated Once Within a Time is a very different work, described as “a bardic fairy tale about the end of the world and the beginning of a new one, tinged with […]

The post Trailer Watch: Godfrey Reggio’s Once Within a Time first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

During his day job as a Spanish criminal interpreter in a small town in California, filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes met a young man named Sansón, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who was sentenced to life in prison without parole. With no permission to interview him, Sansón and Reyes worked together over a decade, using hundreds of letters as inspiration for recreations of Sansón’s childhood—featuring members of Sansón’s own family. The resulting film, Sansón and Me, captures the developing friendship between filmmaker and subject as they navigate both the immigration and criminal justice systems.   Sansón and Me opened the new season of […]

The post Witnessing His Life Story: Rodrigo Reyes Interviews the Subject of His Doc, Sansón and Me first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Eigil Bryld must be feeling funny lately. After a career peppered with reality-based dramas (You Don’t Know Jack and The Report), thrillers (Deep Water) and romantic period pieces (Tulip Fever and Becoming Jane), the Danish cinematographer has lightened up with a trio of comedies out this year—The Machine, Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers and No Hard Feelings. In the latter, Jennifer Lawrence plays a Montauk Uber driver who agrees to seduce the son (Andrew Barth Feldman) of a wealthy couple summering in the quaint Long Island enclave in exchange for a used Buick Regal. Bryld spoke to Filmmaker about lensing the […]

The post “It’s Never Fun to Do Nude Work”: DP Eigil Bryld on No Hard Feelings first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Opening today in 20 markets across the United States is Tracy Droz Tragos’s Plan C, a documentary about social scientist Francine Coeytaux and her team’s work on expanding access to abortion pills online. With Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul opening today, and New York’s IFC Center run beginning October 13, we are reposting the director’s answer to our annual Sundance Question about the various challenges she faced while making the film. — Editor Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, […]

The post “Raising Funds for a Film ‘About Abortion’ Is Never Easy” | Tracy Droz Tragos, PLAN C first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

With its digital restoration world premiering at the 61st New York Film Festival tomorrow, we are publishing online for the first time Noam Christopher’s interview with writer/director Nancy Savoca about her Household Saints from our Fall, 1993 edition. Originally released by Fine Line Features, the new restoration is a Milestone Films release. — Editor Nancy Savoca made her directorial debut with True Love, an unsentimental, widely acclaimed look at love and marriage in the Bronx. The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1989 United States Film Festival, the film not only launched Savoca’s career, but the career of […]

The post “Sometimes I Think We Romanticize Not Having Enough Money for a Film”: Nancy Savoca on Household Saints first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

On big budget spectacles, the tail of VFX often wags the dog of principal photography. With The Creator—an $80 million sci-fi epic about a war between mankind and humanoid AI starring John David Washington—director Gareth Edwards sought to reverse that arrangement. The Monsters and Rogue One filmmaker has described the process of meticulously recreating previs on set as painting a target on the wall and trying to fire an arrow into the bullseye. With The Creator, Edwards wanted to fire the arrow first, then paint the target around it, with VFX ideation occurring later in the pipeline after being inspired by […]

The post The Focus Pulling Olympics: DP Oren Soffer on The Creator first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Full of what can only be described as “lovingly filmed food porn,” Trần Anh Hùng’s The Taste of Things won best director at this year’s Cannes. Here’s the first trailer for the film (originally titled The Pot-au-Feu in English), which stars Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche. The Taste of Things opens from IFC Films on February 9, 2024 in limited release, with expansion to follow on February 14.

The post Trailer Watch: The Taste of Things first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.