Though it hasn’t reached the fever pitch of absurdity of The Fast and the Furious franchise just yet—a series that began as a Point Break riff but now includes nuclear submarines and Pontiac Fieros in space —the John Wick saga has certainly expanded from its humble beginnings. Produced independently and shot in New York on a budget in the mid-$20 million range, the original film found its titular assassin (played by Keanu Reeves) emerging from retirement to avenge the death of his dog. Four chapters later, Reeves is hopping between New York City, Osaka, Berlin, Paris and the Wadi Rum […]

The post “A Kick is Like a Line of Dialogue”: Editor Nathan Orloff on John Wick: Chapter 4 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Dune: Part Two will hit theaters just over two years after Dune, director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 landmark sci-fi novel. The first trailer arrives six months before the second and final installment of Villeneuve’s saga is set for release. The story will continue to follow characters from the first film (save for Oscar Isaac, whose Duke Leto Atreides perishes during the first half of the story), with roles reprised by Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgård, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Charlotte Rampling and Javier Bardem. Yet there’s a considerable amount of buzz surrounding […]

The post Trailer Watch: Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Visions du Réel is so punctilious about its nonfiction festival identity that the program booklet explicitly labels the few titles not fitting that (honestly very broad) categorization as “Fiction,” a tag only deployed this year for sidebar retrospectives of Alice Rohrwacher and Lucrecia Martel. For myself, I wanted to attend less because of any particular predilection for nonfiction and more because VdR seems full of stronger iterations of a type of movie I tend to enjoy, roughly categorizable as “relatively well-financed art-leaning European (co)productions”—i.e., I was primarily interested for aesthetic reasons, with the filmmakers chosen for this year’s sidebars illustrative […]

The post Visions du Réel 2023: Nights Gone By, Linda and Irina, This Woman, Chagrin Valley first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Canadian actress Charlotte Le Bon steps behind the camera for the spectral love story Falcon Lake, her directorial debut. Written by Le Bon in collaboration with François Choquet, the film is loosely based on the 2017 graphic novel A Sister by Bastien Vivès. After premiering at Cannes last year during Directors’ Fortnight, Falcon Lake now receives an official trailer ahead of its theatrical and digital release later this summer. The French-language film follows an aloof teenage boy on summer vacation who fosters an unlikely relationship with an older girl, experiencing a plethora of extreme emotions while they stay on what’s […]

The post Trailer Watch: Charlotte Le Bon’s Falcon Lake first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Portland Art Museum’s PAM CUT // Center for an Untold Tomorrow has announced the honorees for the fourth annual Cinema Unbound Awards, which recognizes those working within the intersection of art and cinema. This year’s recipients are actor-comedian Fred Armisen, Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, chef Gregory Gourdet, writer Jon Raymond (who frequently collaborates with Kelly Reichardt, most recently on Showing Up), film scholar Jacqueline Stewart and actress Tessa Thompson. The ceremony will take place in-person at the Portland Art Museum on June 22, featuring a “culinary takeover” by Gourdet’s Haitian live-fire restaurant Kann, which was a finalist for the […]

The post PAM CUT Announces Honorees for 2023 Cinema Unbound Awards first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Prismatic Ground, the New York-based film festival that showcases experimental documentary and avant-garde works, kicks off this week. Spanning five days and six theaters, the festival will run from May 3-7 with screenings at the Museum of the Moving Image, Maysles Documentary Center, BAM Cinematheque, DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema, Light Industry and Anthology Film Archives. Now in its third year, Prismatic Ground’s 2023 slate features approximately 60 films, including both recent films from contemporary artists and new restorations of work from essential filmmakers. During a recent chat with Prismatic Ground’s founder and director Inney Prakash, he emphasized that the festival’s lineup […]

The post 15 Films to Catch During Prismatic Ground 2023 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Filmmaker is pleased to premiere the trailer for Film at Lincoln Center’s “The World of Apichatpong Weerasethakul” series, a complete retrospective of the Thai filmmaker’s career so far. The series will run from May 4-14 in New York City and feature seven feature films, four short film programs and Weerasethakul in attendance for select screenings. The filmmaker also programmed several films to screen alongside his own, including Chantal Ackerman’s La Captive, Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Puppetmaster, Guy Maddin’s Careful, Abbas Kiarostami’s Homework and Frederick Wiseman’s Primate (presented in 16mm), among others. Several of the filmmaker’s […]

The post Exclusive Trailer: Film at Lincoln Center’s “The World of Apichatpong Weerasethakul” Series first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The 4K restoration and re-release of the comedy Party Girl brings Parker Posey to Back To One. Shortly after the success of that movie in 1995, she went on to star in so many independent films, like The Daytrippers, Clockwatchers, The House of Yes (not to mention a bunch of Hal Hartley and Christopher Guest classics), that she was dubbed “Queen of the Indies.” On this episode, she explains why that moniker was oddly detrimental to her career. She talks about recent experiences on the sets of Beau Is Afraid and The Staircase; the connection between actors and athletes; why, […]

The post “It’s a Difficult Sport”: Parker Posey (Back To One, Episode 251) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In the new Amazon series Swarm, a fanatical devotee of a Beyoncé-esque pop star embarks on a quest to meet the singer, with a few stops along the way to dispose of those who have disparaged her idol online. Created by Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, the show hops around between Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Seattle and L.A., but was shot largely in Atlanta by Drew Daniels. The Red Rocket and Krisha DP spoke to Filmmaker about the influence of Michael Haneke, the beauty of imperfect camera moves and Swarm’s extremely last-minute switch to 35mm film.  Filmmaker: Let’s start with some […]

The post “Friday Morning Donald Called Me and Said, ‘We’re Shooting Film’”: DP Drew Daniels on Swarm first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The unbreakable bond of sisterhood threatens to be thwarted by a eugenic evil conspiracy in Polite Society, writer-director Nida Manzoor’s feature debut. The British filmmaker, who was raised in a Pakistani Muslim household, has encased vital aspects of her own life in each project she’s embarked on so far. Her Peacock/Channel 4 show We Are Lady Parts, which follows a punk band comprised entirely of Muslim women, incorporates her natural musical prowess through writing the show’s music with her siblings Shez and Sanya. Now with Polite Society, Manzoor reflects on another immutable aspect of her life: the chaos and camaraderie […]

The post “There’s a Beauty to the Dark Feminine”: Nida Manzoor on Polite Society first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.