Life After is an investigation into the whereabouts of Elizabeth Bouvia, whose request for medically assisted in dying in 1983 kicked off a debate that still rages today. The film is Reid Davenport’s follow-up to the 2022 Sundance film I Didn’t See You There and screens as part of the festival’s U.S. Documentary Competition. The film is also the first producer credit for Colleen Cassingham. Below, she talks about being challenged by her film’s subject matter, navigating conundrums of documentary ethics, and the overlapping crises in the industry. See all responses to our annual Sundance first-time producer interviews here. Filmmaker: How […]

The post “The Onus Always Comes Back to Producers’ Creativity”: Producer Colleen Cassingham on Life After first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Reid Davenport’s follow-up to I Didn’t See You There probes the intersection between disability rights and medical assistance in dying in relation to the case of Elizabeth Bouvia, who started a national conversation about the issue in 1983 that persists to this day. The film screens in the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Documentary Competition. Don Bernier (Athlete A, An Inconvenient Sequel) served as the film’s editor. Below, he explains how working on Life After altered his view on the subject and connects the fine arts and experimental film that sparked his interest in film with documentary editing. See all responses to our […]

The post “Bringing Light to Darkness Does Motivate My Choice”: Editor Don Bernier, Life After first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni directed, shot, edited and produced their debut feature, Cutting Through Rocks, about an Iranian councilwoman who uses her position to advocate for the rights of women and girls in her village. The film screens as part of the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Below, Khaki and Eyni respond in their capacity as producers about the process of finding funding while sticking with their subjects. See all responses to our annual Sundance first-time producer interviews here. Filmmaker: How did you connect with this filmmaker and wind up producing the film? Khaki & Eyni: […]

The post “Sudden Twists and Turns Are What Support the Core Idea”: Producers Sara Khaki & Mohammadreza Eyni on Cutting Through Rocks first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In Cutting Through Rocks, directors Mohammadreza Eyni and Sara Khaki follow Iranian councilwoman Sarah Shahverdi, who teaches girls to ride motorcycles and uses her position to try to end child marriages. Cutting Through Rocks screens as part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition. Eyni and Khaki, besides directing, also served as the film’s editors. Below, they explain their method for editing in parallel and how they combed through 200 hours of footage. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were […]

The post “We Were the First Audience for Our Editing Work”: Editors Sara Khaki & Mohammadreza Eyni on Cutting Through Rocks first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Heightened Scrutiny documents ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio as he fights of transgender rights in the courtroom, as well as the battles waged outside the courtroom by those advocating for their rights. The film is director Sam Feder’s follow-up to 2020’s Disclosure and screens as part of the Sundance Premieres section. Emelie Mahdavian, whose previous credits include Midnight Traveler and Singing in the Wilderness, served as the film’s editor. Below, Mahdavian talks about the challenges of editing a film whose story is unfolding outside the editing room in real time. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind […]

The post “The Story was Unfolding in Real Time”: Editor Emelie Mahdavian on Heightened Scrutiny first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Amber Fares’s Sundance-premiering Coexistence, My Ass! takes its fabulous title from a one-woman show of the same name, a piece developed (at Harvard of all places) by the doc’s star, “activist-comedian” Noam Shuster Eliassi. The daughter of an Iranian Jewish mother and a Romanian Jewish father, Shuster Eliassi grew up in “Oasis of Peace” (Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam), a utopian community purposely comprised equally of Jews and Palestinians, where she would become “the literal poster child for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” and eventually a co-director of the UN’s Interpeace organization by the time she was in her early 20s. But then […]

The post “It Was More Pointedly a Satirical Look at …’The Peace-Building Industry’”: Amber Fares on her Sundance-Premiering Coexistence, My Ass! first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“Is it even possible for something designed as entertainment to be a public service?” Predators cinematographer-editor-director David Osit asks this question of ethnographer Mark de Rond about NBC TV show To Catch a Predator and its successors, but it also applies to this project’s of-the-moment anxieties about nonfiction practice. Documentaries seem to have entered a phase of self-reflexive fretting about their own impact; I think one reason No Other Land has become so popular is because it explicitly states this, having its subjects worry about their Facebook click rates and wonder out loud whether the film they’re making can possibly […]

The post Sundance 2024: Predators, André is an Idiot, Marlee Matlin: I’m Not Alone first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? It would be hard to narrow it down to only one moment or day, as Mad Bills was a journey unlike any other. That we got through it was anything short of impressive considering the ambition of our story and our limited time and resources, however much a testament to the skill of the […]

The post “For the First Time, I Could See the Film in Front of Me” | Joel Alfonso Vargas, Mad Bills to Pay first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Director Cooper Raiff returns to Sundance after his prize-winning Cha Cha Real Smooth with the episodic series Hal & Harper, about a pair of codependent siblings and their father. The first four episodes of Hal & Harper will screen as part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s Episodics section. Besides directing, Raiff also served as editor on the series. Below, he talks about his approach to editing as a writer-director and why editing the series transformed his understanding of its characters. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your series? What were the factors and attributes that led […]

The post “Connect Images in the Edit Based on an Analysis of Characters”: Editor Cooper Raiff on Hal & Harper first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Hal & Harper charts the development two codependent siblings with a lifetime of inside jokes and their father. The series is directed by Cooper Raiff (Cha Cha Real Smooth), who plays Hal; Lili Reinhart; and Mark Ruffalo. The first four episodes of Hal & Harper will screen as part of Sundance’s Episodics sidebar. Doug Emmett (The Edge of Seventeen, Sorry to Bother You) the series’ cinematographer, describes the show’s naturalistic and raw feel below. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors […]

The post “Something That Felt Unadorned and a Bit Raw”: DP Doug Emmett on Hal & Harper first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.