Set in 1936, The Piano Lesson—the fourth chronological entry in playwright August Wilson’s ten-play Century Cycle—is both a family drama and a ghost story. The titular musical instrument sits in the living room of Doaker Charles (Samuel L. Jackson), who lives in Pittsburgh’s Hill District with his adult niece Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) and her young daughter Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith). As the story opens, Berniece’s brother Boy Willie (John David Washington) and his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) have arrived at the Charles House from Mississippi, looking to sell a truckload of watermelons they’ve brought from their home state. Once inside […]

The post “You Can’t Tell the Story of America Without a Theft”: Malcolm Washington on The Piano Lesson first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. At this year’s 35th annual Producers Guild Awards (which took place on Feb. 25, two weeks before the March 3 Oscars), Netflix’s American Symphony took the prize for best documentary feature. The Matthew Heineman-directed film followed musician Jon Batiste’s meteoric year in which he won five Grammys (including album of the year) and premiered a new composition at Carnegie Hall—all while his wife, journalist and artist Suleika Jaouad, fought a rare form of leukemia. One […]

The post Will & Harper and the Netflix Effect first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Piotr Winiewicz’s About a Hero is as mindbogglingly complex as its eye-catching logline is simple: “A murder mystery – unwittingly starring Werner Herzog.” More precisely, the Polish filmmaker’s doc is actually an adaptation of a script in which the aforementioned cinematic maverick travels to the fictional Getunkirchenburg to investigate the strange death of a local factory worker named Dorem Clery. Even stranger, that screenplay was written by “Kaspar” (as in Kaspar Hauser), an AI trained on the Herzog oeuvre. With a look inspired by the work of German photographer Thomas Demand, the film, shot mostly across northern Germany, also features […]

The post “The Film Is Not About AI, Not About Werner Herzog, and Never Aimed To Embrace AI Technology”: Piotr Winiewicz on His IDFA Opening Night Doc About a Hero first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The Gotham Film & Media Institute, Filmmaker‘s publisher, announced today in a press release that Emmy Award-winner Zendaya will receive the Spotlight Tribute for her performance as Tashi Donaldson in the Luca Guadagnino-directed film Challengers, at the 34th edition of The Gothams, taking place Monday, December 2, 2024 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. From the Gotham: The Spotlight Tribute was created by The Gotham in order to recognize phenomenal efforts by individuals in film and television who captivated global audiences with the biggest projects of the year. With the Spotlight Tribute, The Gotham will honor Zendaya’s remarkable […]

The post Zendaya to Receive Spotlight Tribute at the 2024 Gotham Awards first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It’s a bit surprising to think that when I last interviewed Nanfu Wang it was for her six-part HBO docuseries Mind Over Murder, which revisited an infamous case of justice gone haywire in a small town in Nebraska back in the 1980s. Which, in terms of subject matter, is a far cry from this year’s followup (also for HBO). Night Is Not Eternal is a deep character study, a format the acclaimed director has long embraced, that charts the rise of Rosa Maria Paya, daughter of Oswaldo Paya, a five-time Nobel Peace Prize-nominated activist assassinated by the Cuban government in 2012. […]

The post “I Grow as I Make a Film”: Nanfu Wang on Her HBO Documentary, Night Is Not Eternal first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

I’ve been making films for many years now, at the unusual intersection of US independent and East-European cinema, and teaching at a university in New York. When COVID hit, it made me re-evaluate everything I was doing. I stopped the projects I was working on as they seemed superfluous in that reality. To me, the global response to the pandemic demonstrated like nothing before the shocking inability of international and national institutions to cooperate and deal efficiently and equitably with a planetary crisis. And now, it almost seems as if nothing had happened; it’s just “business as usual.” But it’s […]

The post Everything That Will Happen Has Already Happened (Or Why I Still Make Independent Ultra-Low-Budget Films in a Time of Media Oversaturation) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Today, the IDA announced the nominees for the 40th IDA Documentary Awards. The show will be held on December 5th and hosted by actor and comedian Adam Conover. From the press release: Adam Conover to Host the 40th IDA Documentary Awards The Awards Ceremony will be hosted by actor, comedian, and writer Adam Conover on December 5, 2024, 7:00 PM PT / 10:00 PM ET at The Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles and streamed live documentary.org and simultaneously on IDA YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram channels. Learn more about the nominees and get your tickets for the ceremony at documentary.org/awards2024 The […]

The post IDA Documentary Awards Announce Nominees first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Actor Timothée Chalamet and director James Mangold will receive the Visionary Tribute for their collaboration on A Complete Unknown, the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic from Searchlight Pictures, at the 34th edition of The Gothams, taking place on Monday, December 2, 2024 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. Announced in a press release, the Gotham Visionary Tribute “recognizes groundbreaking collaborations that push the boundaries of storytelling in film.” “In A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet and James Mangold have beautifully captured Dylan’s emergence in 1960s New York not just as an artistic evolution, but as a meditation on the necessity […]

The post Timothée Chalamet and James Mangold Will Receive Gotham Award Visionary Tribute for A Complete Unknown Collaboration first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

As an actor, Peter Vack is known for his work in television series such as I Just Want My Pants Back (series lead), Mozart In The Jungle, and Love Life, and recent independent films like PVT Chat, Eugene Kotlyarenko’s The Code and his virtuoso turn as an evil version of “Peter Vack” in Actors (written, directed, and co-staring his sister Betsey Brown). As a filmmaker, he has gotten a reputation for demanding an “all in” approach from his performers. His first feature, Assholes (called “the most disgusting movie ever”), won a jury prize at SXSW, and his latest, www.RachelOrmont.com, described […]

The post “Your Own Formula, In You, Is Discovered in the Petri Dish of Confidence and Belief”: Peter Vack, Back To One, Episode 318 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

When she first started filming in the Republic of Artsakh—a small “breakaway” state where most residents were ethnically Armenian, but lived under the control of Azerbaijan—Emily Mkrtichian was planning to portray the pivotal roles local women play 30 years after experiencing a violent war. But her project was thrust in a completely different direction when the small sovereign state became besieged by sudden conflict once again.  Taking its title from the opening line of most Armenian fairy tales, Mkrtichian’s feature debut is fascinated with the preservation of a place that no longer exists. For the first half of the film, […]

The post “If No One Documents It, It Basically Doesn’t Exist”: Emily Mkrtichian on Her DOC NYC-Screening Feature Debut There Was, There Was Not first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.