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 […]

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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.

Threads concerning family, identity and resistance are carefully interwoven in Yalla Parkour, Palestinian filmmaker Areeb Zuaiter’s portrait of Gaza’s scrappy yet talented troupe of parkour athletes. After getting in touch with Ahmed Matar—a young man who dreams of securing a rare visa so that he may attend international parkour tournaments—Zuaiter realizes that by documenting his story, she can reconnect with a facet of her own heritage that she had once felt completely closed off to.  While her family originally hails from the city of Nablus in the West Bank, conversing with Ahmed brings out the filmmaker’s own misconceptions about life […]

The post “We Need to Keep Working, Otherwise Our Voices Will Be Buried and Unheard.”: Areeb Zuaiter on Her Gaza-Set DOC NYC World Premiere Yalla Parkour 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. I really didn’t want to write a newsletter about how a Trump victory might disrupt an already chaotic Oscar season, but here we are. When I had multiple publicists reaching out about their films on Thursday morning, proving our post-election malaise was limited to a single day, I realized that the show must go on—and the show, I fear, might become a lot dumber. I can’t help but think back to the 2017 Oscars, in […]

The post The Apprentice and Other Post-Election Campaigns first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

I was delighted to be invited to the Tokyo International Film Festival, which came with the particularly desirable bonus of being elsewhere during the US election cycle’s final days. Taking into account the time difference on my date of return, I hoped an election-night nailbiter would let me fly back in unperturbed ignorance, but… The route back flew over the international date line; the metaphorical obviousness of literally going backwards in time to the States was too hamhanded for my taste, albeit appropriately overstated in keeping with the bludgeoning that’s about to occur. Before that hammer fell, the city more […]

The post Tokyo International Film Festival 2024: Dementia, Optimism and Béla Tarr first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Admittedly, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) was not in my geographic vocabulary before this region in the Caucasus Mountains took centerstage at last year’s IDFA, when first-time filmmaker Shoghakat Vardanyan nabbed top prize for 1489. The heartbreaking doc details the Armenian director’s real-time, smartphone-shot search for her brother, a young student and musician who’d been conscripted into the most recent war over their disputed homeland. And now we have Sareen Hairabedian’s cinematic, Gotham-supported My Sweet Land screening DOC NYC (where Emily Mkrtichian’s There Was, There Was Not, which follows four women in Artsakh, is also playing). Starring a bright 11-year old citizen of Artsakh named […]

The post “Shifting Focus from Political Agendas To the Real Faces of Conflict”: Sareen Hairabedian on Her DOC NYC-Premiering My Sweet Land first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Though Debra Granik is no stranger to Sundance — 2004’s Down to the Bone, 2018’s Leave No Trace and 2010’s Oscar-nominated (in four categories) Winter’s Bone all premiered in Park City — I was a bit surprised to see the indie vet’s name attached to a project at the fest’s 40th edition earlier this year. Unlike the director’s prior critically-acclaimed films, Conbody vs Everybody is neither narrative nor a traditional feature doc, but a documentary in five chapters (six at Sundance, of which only parts four and five were screened) that took Granik and her longtime collaborators, EP Anne Rosellini and EP/editor Victoria […]

The post “Doc Filmmaking Can Be a Very Weird Process of Interpersonal Negotiations”: Debra Granik on Conbody vs Everybody first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Returning for its 15th edition, DOC NYC presents yet another robust lineup of over 200 non-fiction short and feature-length films. Taking place in-person from November 13-21 and online through December 1, the largest documentary film festival in the country features buzzy future Oscar contenders, hidden gems from this year’s global festival circuit and even a handful of world premieres amid its 2024 program. Screenings will be held at several Manhattan theaters (namely IFC Center, SVA Theater and Village East) and via the festival’s own streaming platform. Below, from Filmmaker‘s writers, find a selection of recommended titles to seek out, which […]

The post 18 Recommended Titles at 2024’s DOC NYC first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

On a dull white piece of archival paper measuring 39.3 x 27.3”, ghoulish figures in wispy gray and red stenciled figures are engaged in various jousting poses. Text is sandwiched between the figures: “One day the streets all over the world will be empty. From every tomb I’ll learn all we imagine of light.” The 2016 painting by Nalini Malani, one of India’s foremost video artists, is titled All we Imagine of Light. Years later, her daughter Payal Kapadia would ask to borrow and rework the title for her film All We Imagine As Light, which would eventually go on […]

The post “I Had Given Up on this Film”: Payal Kapadia on All We Imagine as Light first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.