25 years ago, Alan Rudolph’s Breakfast of Champions left theaters as quickly as it arrived, barely making a blip during a landmark year in American cinema save for a litany of negative reviews that all but celebrated its failure. (Luc Moullet might have been its sole admirer upon release.) Adapted from the Kurt Vonnegut novel of the same name, Breakfast captures a cross-section of American archetypes on the brink of a collective nervous breakdown; correspondingly, the film also feels like it’s also losing its mind. Rudolph, cinematographer Elliot Davis and editor Suzy Elmiger imbue Breakfast with a manic, comically grotesque […]

The post “This is Going to Be the Most Circuitous Interview”: Alan Rudolph on Breakfast of Champions first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Sustainability and scarcity of opportunity have been predominant challenges of a documentary career since the early days of the form, but sustaining mental health has been a significant one as well. Launched in 2021 by a group of documentary filmmakers and mental-health professionals, DocuMentality evolved out of a series of revelatory presentations and conversations–first at IDA’s Getting Real conference in 2018, then a year later, over the course of a two-week online discussion entitled Mental Health and the Documentary Business, hosted by long-running global forum The D-Word. This past May, the DocuMentality team released its first report: The Price of […]

The post The Price of Passion: Addressing the Mental Health of Documentary Filmmakers first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Jaclyn Bethany is an Emmy-award-winning filmmaker, writer and actor based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has been committed to creating art and telling stories exploring complex women, the intimacy of female friendship, sisterhood and queerness from the female perspective. Some upcoming film projects include Delusion, a short film in collaboration with Adult Film NYC; In Transit, written by Alex Sarrigeorgiou and featuring Jennifer Ehle and Francois Arnaud; and All Five Eyes, which she co-wrote with Greta Bellamacina, featuring Bellamacina and Honor Swinton-Byrne. In this episode she talks about her role as the co-artistic director of The Fire Weeds, a female […]

The post “The Things that Scare Me the Most Now are the Things I’m Most Interested in Doing”: Jaclyn Bethany, Back To One, Episode 316 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The 27th edition of the SCAD Savannah Film Festival boasted a number of unexpected bonuses this year. First there was the eclectic,“Hollywood meets indie” mashup guest list to accompany the stellar program (much of which had recently premiered at the top tier fests). Actors in town to pick up awards at the sold out screenings included Amy Adams, Pamela Anderson, Kieran Culkin, Colman Domingo, Natasha Lyonne, Demi Moore, Lupita Nyong’o and Sebastian Stan among others; while the producers and directors attending to nab honoraries ran the gamut from Jerry Bruckheimer, Kevin Costner and Jason Reitman, to Richard Linklater, RaMell Ross, […]

The post “The Streamers Have Eaten All the Bananas”: Behind Her Lens: Producers at the 27th SCAD Savannah Film Festival first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

When Josh Margolin first heard that his grandmother had nearly become the victim of a phone scam — in which someone pretending to be Margolin attempted to score thousands of dollars from the elder — he immediately felt ill at ease and violated on her behalf. But it didn’t take long for the writer-director to recognize a great story: What if his grandmother had given away her money and, upon realizing the scam, set out to get revenge? The result is Margolin’s feature debut Thelma, starring June Squibb in the eponymous role as a 93-year-old Los Angeles resident who doesn’t […]

The post “There’s an Inherent Absurdity to the Lengths She Goes”: Josh Margolin on Thelma first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Angela Jolie will receive the Performer Tribute for her performance in Pablo Larrain’s Maria at the upcoming 2024 Gotham Awards, the Gotham Film Festival & Media Institute announced today. Jolie plays iconic opera singer Maria Callas in the Paris-set film that finds Callas, in her final days, processing her life and career on stage. It follows films by Larrain about other 20th century women icons, including Jackie Onassis (Jackie) and Spencer (Princess Diana). “Like the legendary figure she portrays, Angelina Jolie transcends mere performance to craft something extraordinary,” said The Gotham executive director Jeffrey Sharp in a press release. “Her […]

The post Angelina Jolie to Receive 2024 Gotham Awards Performer Tribute first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Uttering the words “artificial intelligence” in Hollywood right now elicits something of a Chicken Little response. From major studio IP franchises to small independent documentaries, there is no corner of the entertainment industry that artificial intelligence does not (or will not) touch and, with so much uncertainty surrounding the legality of AI, many industry stakeholders have taken to wringing their hands and proclaiming that the sky is falling. Despite artificial intelligence’s novelty, however, many of the issues surrounding its legality can be addressed by pre-existing copyright and First Amendment principles. Copyright Guidelines Governing “Human Authorship” For example, let’s examine the […]

The post What Filmmakers Should Know about AI Copyright Restrictions first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It’s been nearly a decade since Athina Rachel Tsangari, the idiosyncratic Greek filmmaker who’s never one to repeat herself, has graced us with a new film. Tsangari is always looking for a new challenge: from the improvisational, genre-bending desolateness of The Slow Business of Going (2000), to her Greek Weird-Wave breakout Attenberg (2010) and game of hypermasculinity, Chevalier (2015), each new project takes on a whole different formal imagination. What links them together? Beyond their ostensible differences is Tsangari’s affinity for betweenness—that feeling of not belonging. This feeling is reflected in the films as much as in Tsangari’s life, bouncing […]

The post “A Nihilist Western”: Athena Rachel Tsangari on Harvest first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Anora, Nickel Boys, Challengers and I Saw the TV Glow were among the multiple 2024 Gotham Award nominees announced today by The Gotham Film & Media Institute, Filmmaker‘s publisher. Anora, winner of this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or, received the most nominations — four, including Best Picture, Best Director, Outstanding Lead Performance and Outstanding Supporting Performance. Among other films making their mark with multiple nominations are Good One, A Different Man, The Brutalist and The Fire Inside. On the documentary side, this year’s Berlin Festival Documentary Award, No Other Land, joins other international titles (Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Intercepted and […]

The post Anora, Nickel Boys, No Other Land Score 2024 Gotham Award Nominations first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Daisy Ridley shot to global fame for her portrayal of Rey in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Since then, she has been choosing diverse roles that showcase her talents in films with wide ranging budgets that prove her north star is the quality of the work and nothing else. She has three films that have come out in this year alone—Sometimes I think About Dying, Young Woman and The Sea, and her latest, Magpie. On this episode, she explains how coming up with the idea for Magpie and building her character from the ground up was an interesting exercise in […]

The post “I’m Good at Being Told What To Do, and I Genuinely Think That is a Skill”: Daisy Ridley, Back To One, Episode 315 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.