Investigating the death of a utopian vision coalesces with a survey of a “developing” dystopian hellscape in Museum of the Revolution, the sprawling, meditative effort from filmmaker, researcher and educator Srđan Keča. Through a series of charming vignettes that are nonetheless thick with human despair (and radical joy in the face of it), Keča’s documentary examines the crumbling remains of the titular edifice in the otherwise rapidly evolving city of Belgrade, Serbia. Construction of the building originally commenced in 1961, and the never-formally-erected Museum of the Revolution was conceived as a grand tribute to then-socialist Yugoslavia. Yet the project was […]

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Martin Scorsese’s first film to world premiere at Cannes since After Hours in 1986, the trailer finally arrives for Killers of the Flower Moon shortly before it screens at the festival. Adapted from David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, the film’s script was co-penned by Scorsese and Eric Roth. The western boasts a 206-minute runtime and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Scott Shepherd and John Lithgow. The plot revolves around a series of murders in 1920s Oklahoma of the oil-rich Osage Nation and the […]

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The delicate coming-of-age process is curbed by one family’s struggle with a so-called “crisis” in Stay Awake, writer-director Jamie Sisley’s feature debut. Of course, the crisis at hand is the opioid epidemic, and the afflicted party is a tight-knit family living in a small Virginia town. Michelle (Chrissy Metz, best known for her role on NBC’s This Is Us) is a single mother who undeniably loves her two sons Ethan (Wyatt Oleff) and Derek (Fin Argus). But unfaltering devotion on its own cannot keep Michelle sober, particularly when her doctor keeps refilling her highly-addictive prescription. Most nights, the brothers find themselves desperately […]

The post “I Sort of Became the Festival Therapist”: Writer-Director Jamie Sisley on Addiction Drama Stay Awake first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Frémaux is not good at playing defense. When asked at Monday’s pre-opening day press conference about an open letter published by (retired) actress Adèle Haenel accusing the festival of protecting “its rapist chiefs,” among them Roman Polanski and Gérard Depardieu, Frémaux responded that “if you thought that it’s a festival for rapists, you wouldn’t be here listening to me, you would not be complaining that you can’t get tickets to get into screenings.” “Festival for rapists” is a clunkily phrased self-own for Frémaux and his subsequent leap to ticketing problems is equally ungainly—but the access problems […]

The post Cannes 2023: Occupied City first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

With the Cannes Film Festival underway and Vadim Rizov and Blake Williams readying their first dispatches, here, from our team, are 13 films that we think should be on your radar here on the Croisette. Asteroid City. Following Moonrise Kingdom and The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson’s newest film is his third to premiere at Cannes. Asteroid City boasts a typically sprawling ensemble cast of both returning regulars (Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe) and high-profile new additions (including Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson). While the thematic elements are familiar—dead and disappointing parents, extremely ambitious playwrights and a dedicated elementary school […]

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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has ventured into the realm of audio storytelling with “The Art of Documentary,” a six-episode podcast hosted by Jim LeBrecht, who co-directed and co-produced Crip Camp with Nicole Newnham. Each episode will feature LeBrecht engaging in a discussion with a different documentarian about their individual experiences while crafting their films. “I was approached by Randy Haberkamp and Dina Michelle at the Academy if I’d be interested in hosting and developing this podcast,” LeBrecht told Filmmaker. “To be honest, I was honored. I’ve been an Academy member for a few years but my […]

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A highlight of this year’s Sundance Film Festival and New Directors/New Films, the trailer arrives for writer-director Savanah Leaf’s debut feature Earth Mama. The film stars Oakland rapper Tia Nomore in her first acting role, playing a pregnant mother in the Bay Area with two children in foster care who she must fight to regain custody of. Earth Mama also stars Erika Alexander, fellow rapper Doechii and Euphoria season two addition Dominic Fike (who’s similarly a musician-turned-actor). In his dispatch from New Directors/New Films, Nelson Kim wrote: Earth Mama is earnest social realism of a kind that may seem familiar on […]

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With incredible performances in films like Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home, Deliverance and Runaway Train, Jon Voight has earned himself a spot in the acting Pantheon. At 84, he has never stopped working. Seven seasons of Ray Donovan being a recent highlight. On this episode, he talks about how he “starts slow” when developing an approach to a character, letting “things drop into my psyche.” He pinpoints directorial characteristics of John Schlesinger (director of Midnight Cowboy) that worked well for him, details a scrappy fight scene with Jonathan Rhys Myers on his latest film Mercy, reminisces about working with Cassavetes on Love […]

The post “I Think That’s Why I’m an Actor—I’m a Daydreamer”: Jon Voight (Back To One, Episode 253) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

This year’s 30th anniversary edition of Hot Docs, North America’s largest doc fest, (which ran from April 27 to May 7) was, perhaps unsurprisingly, jam-packed with so many world-premiering films and one-of-a-kind industry events as to be a bit overwhelming. (Fortunately, Hot Docs also boasts one of the smoothest festival apps around to help alleviate all that scheduling stress.) That said, I did manage to make the most of my four days in Toronto, even popping in on the prestigious Hot Docs Forum (which was both impressive and tough to cover with three projects subject to a total media blackout, […]

The post Hot Docs 2023: Russian Films Depict the Brink of War at the Festival’s 30th Anniversary Edition first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The trailer arrives today for Reality, the feature debut of writer-director Tina Satter, who was profiled in our annual 25 New Faces of Film series last year. The film stars Sydney Sweeney as the titular Reality Winner, the NSA contractor who in 2017 was accused of and arrested for leaking classified documents about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections to The Intercept. All of the dialogue in Reality is mined from the real-life transcript of her interrogation over the course of a tense afternoon. In his interview with Satter ahead of the film’s premiere at the Berlin International Film […]

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