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.

When it came time to title his 2018 documentary about The Kronos Quartet, director Sam Green chose A Thousand Thoughts. Referring to an older Kronos composition, the title also spoke to the film’s approach, which was to use the music and biography of the Bay Area classical group to summon up a range of allusive meditations on ephemerality, culture, legacy and death. For his latest documentary, ostensibly about the much larger and more amorphous topic of “sound,” Green has gone in the numerically opposite direction. 32 Sounds, which opens today at New York’s Film Forum, announces itself as, a sort […]

The post Binaural Recording, Room Tone, and Voices from the Past: Sam Green on His Documentary 32 Sounds first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Trenque Lauquen opens with a mystery. Laura, a biologist cataloging plant species in the eponymous town, has gone missing and her husband and a driver she used to work with team up to track her down. The two men share stories and tour the doldrums of the Las Pampas area while beginning to unravel the mystery behind Laura’s disappearance, discoveries that lead to other discoveries and even more questions. Told over the course of 12 chapters and screening in two parts, Trenque Lauquen  unfolds like a large map—sprouting stories within stories in a labyrinth of genres, characters and vivid flashbacks. […]

The post The Pampero Cinematic Universe: 20 Films in 20 Years first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

From uploading to the cloud to editing in the cloud to collaborating across the cloud, there was no shortage of new tools and workflow ideas at NAB to help shoot and edit quicker regardless of where your team is located across the globe. Let’s dive into a few of the most interesting updates, from remotely collaborating to remotely working. Camera to Cloud First up, let’s talk about camera-to-cloud workflows.  The biggest update from Frame.io was the extension of the C2C workflow to still photos.  Now, unlike video where you can use an external device from Atomos or Teradek to add […]

The post Camera to Cloud to Remote Collaboration: New Remote Tools and Workflows from NAB 2023 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The two big product updates from Adobe at NAB were text-based editing in Premiere and still photo support in Camera to Cloud (you can read our coverage on Frame.io updates here). But in chatting with Michael Cioni, Adobe’s Senior Director of Global Innovation, things took a fascinating turn when discussing Firefly, Adobe’s generative AI model, and the future of AI in media production.  Our conversation explored the integration of AI tools in Adobe’s products, as well as the broader implications of AI-driven technologies on the creative process. Michael shared his insights on how the shift towards generative AI solutions could significantly […]

The post A Chat with Adobe’s Michael Cioni on Navigating the AI-Driven Future of Media Production first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

After premiering at Sundance earlier this year, a trailer and release date have dropped for Nancy Schwartzman’s latest doc Victim/Suspect. As with her previous effort Roll Red Roll, the subject of sexual assault—and the gross mishandling of these cases by police and the judicial system at large—is central to the film. Per the film’s official synopsis: Victim/Suspect chronicles journalist Rae de Leon’s investigation into a disturbing pattern: young women report sexual assault to the police but instead of the perpetrators being brought to justice, the women are arrested for filing a false report. Working for The Center for Investigative Reporting, de […]

The post Trailer Watch: Nancy Schwartzman’s Victim/Suspect first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Winner of the Cinema Vision 14Plus Award and Generation Special Mention for Best Film at last year’s Berlinale, Jamie Sisley’s debut feature Stay Awake finally gets a trailer and a limited US theatrical release date. The addiction drama will open at Film Forum in New York City on May 19 and the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles on May 25. An official synopsis reads: A fictionalized account of the filmmaker’s coming of age as he struggles to get out from under the yoke of a prescription-drug-addicted mother in small-town Virginia. Life in the last, lame-duck months of high school, with […]

The post Trailer Watch: Jamie Sisley’s Stay Awake first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Today, Sundance Institute announces the 2023 fellows for its Directors, Screenwriters and Native Labs. 12 fellows will join this year’s Directors and Screenwriters cohort, while the Native Lab will support five fellows. The Native Lab, which supports Indigenous filmmakers developing feature films and episodic projects, will begin with an online portion that runs May 1-5 before continuing in-person in Santa Fe, New Mexico from May 8-13. Of the five fellows participating, three are from the US while the other two hail from Canada (selected with the Indigenous Screen Office) and New Zealand (selected with the New Zealand Film Commission). Largely […]

The post Sundance Institute Announces 2023 Fellows for Directors, Screenwriters and Native Labs first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Over the past two weeks, the 76th Cannes Film Festival has announced its overall lineup, Directors’ Fortnight titles and even additional films to this year’s slate. Now, short films and La Cinef selections round out the 2023 festival, which will run from May 16-27. 11 shorts from 12 countries are represented in the 2023 short film competition, and The Short Film Palme d’or will be awarded by the Jury chaired by Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi. Meanwhile, the 26th edition of La Cinef, a program that selects works submitted by film school students, features 14 narrative shorts and two animated shorts. […]

The post Cannes Film Festival Reveals 2023 Short Film and La Cinef Selections first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.