When I emailed gallery artist and filmmaker Deniz Eroglu to set up an interview about what I thought was his first feature film, The Shipwrecked Triptych, I asked what past work I should familiarize myself with to prepare. “I made another triptych in 2013,” he wrote back. “Maybe that will suffice?” 2013’s The Bedroom Triptych does indeed contain the embryonic seeds of Eroglu’s first formal feature film: three episodes in a darkly humorous vein, all shot on different formats, offering a kind of cross-section of Denmark, where the filmmaker was then based. The Shipwrecked Triptych turns Eroglu’s attention to Germany—first […]

The post “I Love 16mm”: Deniz Eroglu on The Shipwrecked Triptych first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“I’ve been young for so long, and so old for longer.”  — Durga Chew-Bose, from Too Much and Not the Mood (2017)  “Certain phrases fascinate me with their subtle implications, even though I may not altogether understand their meaning.” –-From the novel Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan (1954) In 1955, eighteen-year-old Françoise Sagan’s debut novel Bonjour Tristesse, about a teenager and her widowed playboy father vacationing on the French Riviera, enjoyed three months atop the New York Times bestseller list. Otto Preminger’s lush CinemaScope film adaptation followed in 1958. The director’s clinically cool approach was tepidly received, though Jean-Luc Godard, […]

The post “I Wanted to Make Sure That My Version Was Additive”: Writer-Director Durga Chew-Bose on Adapting Bonjour Tristesse first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

With The Empire, French filmmaker Bruno Dumont’s career is now evenly split between two modes. His first seven films operated within an identifiably Bressonian tradition, while the five films and two mini-series following operate in a more comic, slapstick register. Conversations surrounding the starkness of this pivot—which began in 2014 with miniseries L’il Quinquin—are understandable yet potentially overstated, as there is strong connective tissue through all of his work. The two hapless detectives in L’il Quinquin and Coincoin and the Extra-humans (who reprise their roles in The Empire) drive their cop car on two wheels; a dune buggy wreck into […]

The post “I Always Make What I Can and Not What I Want”: Bruno Dumont on The Empire first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

An actor’s actor of the first order, Vincent D’Onofrio has been delivering “all in” performances, usually in supporting roles, for  nearly four decades—Full Metal Jacket, Men In Black, Household Saints, Steal This Movie!, The Cell, The Magnificent Seven, to name just a few, not to mention 10 audience-loving seasons of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He’s getting more accolades for his latest performance as Wilson Fisk in Daredevil: Born Again. On this episode he talks about the “emotional event” that he has to summon to bring about Fisk’s voice in that series and its predecessor. He takes us all the […]

The post “The Only Way I Can Go on a Set Is If My Head is Out on the Chopping Block and I’m Begging for the Blade to Come Down”: Vincent D’Onofrio, Back To One, Episode 333 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

While sitting on a raft in the middle of a Southern swamp, AP (Annapurna Sriram) learns that her recent string of bad luck, missing tooth included, is caused by a curse. A psychic (played by New Orleans-based rapper Big Freedia) reveals that the only way for AP to free herself from the spiritual bind is to sacrifice an innocent lamb in an ancient ritual. The needed ceremony will cost AP $1,000, which she promises to raise in just a few days. This sets the plot of Fucktoys in motion, which finds AP traversing her pastel yet putrid birthplace of Trashtown […]

The post “This is Part of Where Our Title Came From — the Amount That Women are Censored”: Annapurna Sriram On Her SXSW-Premiering Fucktoys first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

A lonely woman, solely referred to as Gravedigger, has never known romance due to the putrid scent she absorbs from her occupational namesake in the latest feature from director, star and co-writer Grace Glowicki following 2019’s Tito. One fateful night, Gravedigger’s lucky stars align when a handsome nobleman (co-writer Ben Petrie, Glowicki’s husband/frequent collaborator) becomes infatuated by this “fetid creature,” whose smell has the unexpected effect of turning him on. The film, however, is entitled Dead Lover, clearly alluding to the tragic conclusion of Gravedigger’s whirlwind romance. Desperate to rekindle their passion, she takes her lover’s only remains—a formidable ring […]

The post “Slime Everywhere”: Grace Glowicki and U.S. Girls’ Meg Remy on Dead Lover first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

From a simple observation of canine behavior —”What dog owner hasn’t wondered why their dog barks at ‘nothing?’” — Ben Leonberg has with his SXSW-premiering Good Boy created what he calls “a haunted house movie from an entirely new perspective.” Leonberg’s own dog Indy stars alongside Shane Jensen in this story of an ailing man who retreats to his family’s secluded rural cabin only to confront generational trauma and supernatural forces. With Larry Fessenden as the family patriarch, whose foreboding presence appears solely through distressed VHS tapes playing, Skinamarink-style, on outdated TVs, the house here becomes something of a liminal […]

The post “This Isn’t Air Bud or Lassie, Where the Dog is Always Happy-Go-Lucky”: Director Ben Leonberg on His Canine-POV SXSW Horror Film, Good Boy first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

A seemingly breakthrough medical innovation from the ’60s set off a still-ongoing worldwide trend of surgeries performed on “atypical” babies, celebrated in the context of the gender equality movements of the 70s. Over the long tail of history, the trauma inflicted by innovation revealed those marginalized by the results: a largely hidden and, per the stats, sizable community of people worldwide assembled under the queer umbrella. Premiering at SXSW 2025, The Secret of Me is British director Grace Hughes-Hallett’s directorial debut, but you may already know her as the producer of 2018’s Three Identical Strangers. The main subject of The Secret of […]

The post “Intersex People Don’t Need To Be Fixed”: Grace Hughes-Hallett on The Secret of Me first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Shorts filmmaker Yana Alliata, who has worked in various film industry jobs (Fox Searchlight, FX Networks and Film Finances) makes her feature debut in Reeling, a dark Hawaii-set drama that’s executive produced by Werner Herzog and deals with trauma, memory and the implicit horror of family gatherings. The movie begins with a long, gliding steadicam shot of Ryan (Ryan Wuestewald) entering his family’s ranch-style Hawaii home, where the clan is gathered for a Lu-au that’s also something of a memorial for the their late patriarch. The family is welcoming, but Ryan, beneath the forced smiles, signals fight-or-flight mode, a mental […]

The post “I Aimed to Capture the Subtle Cruelties of Social Isolation”: Yana Alliata On Her Herzog-EP’d SXSW Drama, Reeling first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Common associations audiences might have with Miami: ruise lines, café con leche, beach parties, plastic surgery, Art Basel, Dexter, Scarface, a diverse and predominantly Latino and Caribbean population. AFI Conservatory graduate Jing Ai Ng wants to turn some of those tropes around with her debut feature Forge, premiering in the Narrative Spotlight section of SXSW 2025. The Malaysian-born filmmaker grew up shuttling between Southeast Asia and Miami and wanted to honor the Florida city she knew—that of first- and second gen-Asian subcultures, rare dim sum restaurants and a particular vein of white collar crime: art forgery.  After first exploring a […]

The post “Miami is the City of Hustle”: Jing Ai Ng on SXSW 2025 Premiere Forge first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.