The penultimate edition in its long-running Park City location, the Sundance Film Festival began today, and, as I note every year, the event is a bellwether when it comes to an assessment of the American independent film scene. The acquisitions scorecard will influence the decisions of future film investors, the films premiering here will be eagerly and instantly viewed by festival programmers the world over, and, we hope, promising new directorial careers will be launched. And that’s in addition to perhaps the largest goal, which is for films here to make bracing, uplifting, healing, disturbing, entertaining, provocative and necessary statements […]

The post 16 Films We’re Anticipating at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Filmed before his death in 2023, Pee-wee as Himself, an episodic project from documentary filmmaker Matt Wolf, chronicles the life and legacy of performer Paul Reubens via intimate interviews and a wealth of archival material. Cinematographer David Jacobson discusses his involvement on the project, including meeting Wolf at their alma mater, the influence of technicolor on the shoot and incorporating Errol Morris’s Interrotron technology for the interviews. 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 and attributes that led to your […]

The post “Interrotrons Can Be a Real Drain on Production”: DP David Jacobson on Pee-wee as Himself 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? Positive memories become idealized the more we retell them, and the negative ones vice versa—so I am hesitant to single out a most memorable day, because then it becomes canon… but I will answer the prompt! Being a director means making the tough decisions. My first instinct goes to the worst day, but I’m […]

The post “Sisyphean, but Ultimately Fortuitous” | James Sweeney, Twinless first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore trains its camera on Marlee Matlin, who became the first Deaf performer to win an Oscar when she took home Best Actress for the 1987 film Children of a Lesser God. The film is directed by Deaf director Shoshannah Stern in her directorial debut. Jon Shenk, whose previous credits include Athlete A and Ruth: Justice Ginsburg in Her Own Words, served as director of photography. Below, he explains how cinematographic techniques taken for granted when shooting with hearing actors and spoken dialogue cannot be implemented when shooting Deaf conversations and how he and Stern adjusted their filmic language. See all […]

The post “I Had to Relearn How to Look at and Respond to the World”: DP Jon Shenk on Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore 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? There are two days that stand out. The first one is located not in this movie, even, but in my last film, Summer of Soul, which featured a performance by Sly and the Family Stone at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969. The energy of that performance leapt past that film and stayed with […]

The post “Listening to Them Blew My Mind” | Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Sly Lives first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

By Design is the latest feature film by Amanda Kramer, best known for Please Baby Please and Ladyworld. The film will premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival as part of the NEXT section. Benjamin Shearn, who has edited all of Kramer’s feature films, joined her once again in the cutting room for By Design. Below, he explains how his close friendship with Kramer helps him retain the magic in the edit. 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 factors and attributes that led […]

The post “Amanda’s Approach is About Eclecticism”: Editor Benjamin Shearn on By Design first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Updating the themes of The Conversation and Blow Out for the pandemic era, 2022’s Kimi, Steven Soderbergh’s thriller about the panoptic world of voice assistants, marked the director’s first realized collaboration with veteran screenwriter David Koepp, whose filmography is noteworthy for his many scripts written for legendary auteur directors, including Brian DePalma (Carlito’s Way, Snake Eyes, Mission Impossible), Steven Spielberg (Jurassic Park, The Paper), and David Fincher (Panic Room). And that’s in addition to his direction of his own scripts, including Stir of Echoes and Ghost Town. Now, with another fleet, multi-layered thriller, Presence, Koepp continues his collaboration with Soderbergh, […]

The post “The Boys in the Basement Were Very Active On This One”: Screenwriter David Koepp on Writing Steven Soderbergh’s Ghost POV Thriller Presence first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The original Den of Thieves was all about the thin line separating insular tribes of cops and robbers in Los Angeles. In the breezier Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, Gerard Butler’s detective crosses that line to join forces with former nemesis O’Shea Jackson Jr. to rob the World Diamond Center in Nice. The heist franchise represents a line crossing for cinematographer Terry Stacey as well. The British DP began his features career lensing early aught indies (including American Splendor and films with Larry Fessenden, Allison Anders, Brad Anderson and Lisa Cholodenko) before working on a slew of studio romances and […]

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The Shorenstein Center announced today the Spring 2025 cohort of Documentary Film Fellows. From the press release: The group joins the Center under the auspices of the Documentary Film in the Public Interest Initiative and will spend the semester conducting research and engaging with the HKS community about the challenges facing the field and its impact on civic life. The Documentary Film in the Public Interest Initiative is designed to support new research, analysis, innovation, and provocation around core issues facing the documentary film sector. Through the Fellows’ projects, the Shorenstein Center will engage in examinations of public impact and […]

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Drawing upon a 1983 interview the actress Maria Schneider gave to the French TV show Cinéma Cinéma, Elisabeth Subrin’s short film Maria Schneider, 1983 premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and went on to win in 2023 France’s César award for Best Documentary Short. In Subrin’s film, three actresses — Manal Issa, Aïssa Maïga and Isabel Sandoval — progressively interpret the text of Schneider’s interview throughout the 25-minute piece, with Issa strictly recreating Schneider’s original answers while Maïga and Sandoval adapt the text to reflect their own experiences in the film business, turning the work into, as I wrote […]

The post “… A Singular Biographical Representation of a Subject is Impossible”: Elisabeth Subrin on Maria Schneider, Manal Issa and The Listening Takes first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.