Watch the trailer for the Museum of the Moving Image’s annual First Look showcase, which will run from March 15-19 in Queens, New York City. The 38-film lineup features 25 New Faces of Film alums Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan‘s New Strains, which recently won a Special Jury Prize at IFFR as well as Kevin Jerome Everson‘s short Gospel Hill, on which he collaborated with Claudrena N. Harold. Other notable titles include Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel‘s short film Maid, which will be shown ahead of the Dardenne brothers’ Tori and Lokita. We’ve also covered several First Look films during their premieres at other festivals, including […]

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Sarah Polley’s Women Talking tells a harrowing story of women in an isolated Mennonite colony attempting to find justice in the wake of vicious abuse by the men of their community. Adapted from Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel, which was inspired by true events, Women Talking is a dark film in both a narrative and visual sense, probing all-too-relevant issues of patriarchal violence and religious extremism in dark, shadowy tableaus.  On its face, the film doesn’t seem like the type to prioritize fashion, but the wardrobe of modest long dresses and rigid silhouettes speaks volumes about how clothing can be used […]

The post “Painting with Colors That Have Some Muddy Water in Them”: Costume Designer Quita Alfred on Women Talking first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Five years after the release of her sophomore album Historian, musician Lucy Dacus shares the music video for the album’s emotionally-charged single “Night Shift” directed by Jane Schoenbrun. The filmmaker (and former Filmmaker contributor) behind We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and the forthcoming A24 project I Saw the TV Glow depicts a romance-fueled The Wizard of Oz theme party. Dacus stars in the music video alongside actors E.R. Fightmaster, Eva Victor and Jasmin Savoy Brown of Yellowjackets and the latest Scream reboots, fellow musicians Phoebe Bridgers (Dacus’s boygenius bandmate and co-star of TV Glow), Hop Along‘s Frances Quinlan, […]

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I first saw Justin Zuckerman’s Yelling Fire in an Empty Theater—the writer-director’s ultra-low-budget, MiniDV-shot feature debut—back in December at Williamsburg’s Spectacle Theater. I’d been invited on a whim by the film’s emerging producer Ryan Martin Brown, and I happened to be long overdue for a visit to the volunteer-run microcinema. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but was quickly charmed by Yelling Fire‘s humble yet lived-in digital aesthetic, impressively taut script and endearing ensemble of adrift, wannabe New Yorkers. Shot between November and December of 2019 and made for less than $3,000, the film feels like a strange, beautiful […]

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Spanish actor Marta Milans reprises her role as Mama Rosa in the second installment of the Shazam saga, which hits theaters March 17th. If you binged White Lines during the pandemic, you appreciated her work in that Netflix hit series. On this episode, we go way back to when she played Goneril in King Lear…at age 8! She takes us on a journey of her life as an actor, a job she says you cannot do well unless you “must do it to breathe.” She tells us the reason why language comes easy for her, how music plays a big […]

The post “You Have To Live and Breathe This”: Marta Milans (Back To One, Episode 243) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Ahead of its world premiere at SXSW, a trailer has been released for documentarian Ian Cheney‘s latest film The Arc of Oblivion. Executive produced by Werner Herzog and Sandbox Films (which was recently nominated for an Academy Award for Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love), the film will have its inaugural screening at the festival on March 10. The film’s official synopsis reads: The Arc of Oblivion explores a quirk of humankind: in a universe that erases its tracks, we humans are hellbent on leaving a trace. Set against the backdrop of the filmmaker’s quixotic quest to build an ark in […]

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The Daniels’s Everything Everywhere All at Once won Best Feature at the Film Independent Spirit Awards yesterday. The A24 picture, which has been sweeping other awards events, is the Best Picture frontrunner for next week’s Academy Awards. The film dominated other categories as well, winning Best Director for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Best Lead Performance for Michelle Yeoh, Best Breakthrough Performance for Stephanie Hsu, and Best Editing for Paul Rogers, Best Supporting Performance for Ke Huy Quan and Best Screenplay, again for Kwan and Scheinert. No other work won more than one category with the exception of the TV […]

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War is young men dying and old men talking. The former lies at the heart of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 novel All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the German writer’s experiences in the trenches of World War I. In Netflix’s new adaptation, the latter half of that axiom is also represented with the addition of a subplot centered on the armistice negotiations that ultimately ended fighting on the Western Front. As in Remarque’s novel, the story is principally told through the eyes of Paul Bäumer, a teenager who—propelled by patriotic fervor—enlists alongside his schoolmates only to be disillusioned […]

The post “… A 7mm Difference Between Lenses is Actually Quite a Huge Amount…”: DP James Friend on All Quiet on the Western Front first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

I first became introduced to the work of Robert Townsend unceremoniously when his family sitcom, The Parent ‘Hood, premiered on The WB network in 1995. A professorial father figure with a wife and four children, Townsend’s character seemed, at least to my adolescent eyes, the ideal American dad. A noble role that fit him like a glove, Townsend must have enjoyed following up his caped-crusader directorial effort, The Meteor Man, with a sitcom that afforded him a more domesticated form of heroism.  Those types of roles were not often offered to Townsend. Released in 1987, his directorial debut, Hollywood Shuffle, […]

The post “Seeds for the Revolution”: Robert Townsend on Hollywood Shuffle first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The Sundance Institute announces eight filmmakers selected for the fifth annual Momentum Fellowship, a program created to provide financial support and coaching for mid-career artists from underrepresented communities. The year-long fellowship is tailored for artists who have recently achieved a major accomplishment—such as a successful feature film or episodic work—and offers customized guidance for the fellows as they aim to level up in their careers. “Over the years, the fellows selected for Momentum have all experienced success with their recently completed projects. This has often been a critical moment for artists  to receive creative and tactical support as they focus […]

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