UFO (Untitled Filmmaker Org) announced today the three filmmakers who have been selected for the latest edition of its Short Film Lab. At the Lab, which begins this month, Emily May Jampel, Arielle Knight, and Samuel Wright Smith will develop new scripted, documentary, and animated nonfiction projects, respectively. As announced in a press release, filmmakers Tahiel Jimenez Medina, Brydie O’Connor, Bren Wyona, and Kevin Xian Ming Yu from the inaugural cohort will continue in the program through December to develop new projects across nonfiction and scripted approaches, as part of the Lab’s staggered enrollment model.  From the press release: The […]

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The New York City nightmare of giving up a rent-stabilized apartment inspires (literal) dramatic vengeance in The French Italian, writer-director Rachel Wolther’s feature debut. Long-term couple Doug (Aristotle Athari) and Valerie (Catherine Cohen) live in a gorgeous brownstone on the Upper West Side—that is, until they’ve had it with their raucous downstairs neighbors oscillating between screaming matches and belching off-key karaoke renditions of “La Bamba.” They move out after obsessively peeping and eavesdropping on their newfound enemies; their hatred drives them to Rye, New York, where they take over Doug’s parent’s house while they’re in Boca. Now forced to shuttle […]

The post “I Was a Teenage Theater Nerd”: Rachel Wolther on Her Tribeca-Premiering Feature Debut The French Italian   first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

With Run Lola Run‘s 25th anniversary release this weekend in a new 4K restoration, we are reposting our Spring, 1999 cover interview with director Tom Tykwer. Among the last year’s festival staples, the most exhilarating may have been Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run. The self-taught 34-year-old Berliner’s third feature is a clock-driven, lighter-than-air romantic-action-comedy-thriller floating atop a percolating electronica score. The film plays out three potential narratives of what dangers and distractions the streets of Berlin hold just before noon for Lola (Franka Potente) and Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), two effortlessly cool, suddenly in trouble twentysomething lovers. Manni loses 100,000 marks […]

The post “Most of the Film is Done in 120 Beats Per Minute, But Some of It Is At 140 BPM”: Tom Tykwer on Run Lola Run first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The Tribeca Festival gets underway today through June 16 with its customary mixture of high-profile panel discussions, starry celebrity docs (tonight’s opening night is Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Trish Dalton’s Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge), new media work and American and international acquisition titles hoping to attract the eye of buyers. About the new media work, Tribeca Immersive has shied away entirely from the sort of VR/AR pieces that dominated recent Tribeca festivals, opting instead to present eight immersive art pieces at Mercer Labs. Additionally, there’s a (somewhat) controversial partnership with Open AI that will screen shorts made using the […]

The post 13 Films to Anticipate at the 2024 Tribeca Festival first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Baby Reindeer, Colin from Accounts and Mr. and Mrs. Smith were among the big winners tonight at the inaugural Gotham TV Awards, held in New York City at Cipriani 25. A new awards event mounted by The Gotham Film & Media Institute, Filmmaker‘s publisher, The Gotham TV Awards were announced just this past April and honor creators of episodic TV, limited series, and non-theatrical streaming movies. Going forward, the Gotham TV awards will continue in this early June slot, before the Emmy voting window, while the organization’s long-standing Gotham Awards will remain the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving. This year’s Gotham […]

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After setting her directorial debut Saint Maud in a fading English seaside town, London-born filmmaker Rose Glass turns her gaze toward the American southwest for the neo-noir follow-up Love Lies Bleeding. Set in 1989 and shot in New Mexico by Maud cinematographer Ben Fordesman, the film follows the violent repercussions when a nomadic bodybuilder (Katy O’Brian) falls for a small-town gym manager (Kristen Stewart) with a family full of criminals (including gun-running dad Ed Harris). With the A24 movie out today on VOD following its theatrical run, Fordesman spoke to Filmmaker about emulating film on digital, pick-ups as the final […]

The post “I’m Not Into Embracing the Digital Look”: DP Ben Fordesman on Love Lies Bleeding first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Read Part One of producer Stephanie Roush’s Cannes 2024 Producer Diary here. I think I have finally recovered from my week at Cannes. I have chosen water over rosé, and no longer feel the need to arbitrarily dress up to take a meeting, as if geographical proximity to a black-tie event somehow necessitates “proper attire,” or tenue correcte, as the French call it. And while I’m glad to have a reliable sleep schedule again, I miss micro-dosing espresso in-between meetings, seeing a movie at a moment’s notice, and running into New York friends more than I do when I’m actually […]

The post “Cannes Makes You Believe You Can Just Cosplay Who You Want To Be in the Industry”: Producer Stephanie Roush’s Cannes Producer Diary #2 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Through a partnership with The Gotham, Filmmaker‘s publisher, students from Qunnipiac University attended the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where they participated in breakfast workshops, interned for sales companies, watched movies and soaked up knowledge on how the international film business operates. Three of the students — Willona Amoakoh, Chris Bavaro and Julia Schnarr — recount their experiences below. — Editor Willona Amoakoh I believe the most helpful things for young film workers going to Cannes to know or do are completing a few film business courses ahead of time, establishing an internship placement or assignment, factoring in some excursion time […]

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Betsy Aidem has been in over 80 plays, off Broadway, on Broadway, and around the world. Recent titles of note: All The Way, where she played Lady Bird Johnson, Mama’s Boy, where she played Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother, Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt, and Prayer For The French Republic, for which she is nominated for her first Tony Award. On this gold-filled episode, she talks about her love of extensive research, why she doesn’t think the people she plays are just one person, the “golden moment when your character is unsure,” the importance of a director’s patience and willingness to let her […]

The post “The Most Human Part of Acting is the Moment In-Between When You Don’t Know What To Do”: Betsy Aidem, Back To One, Episode 294 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Lance Oppenheim, a 2019 25 New Face who is something of a non-fiction poet laureate of contemporary loneliness, oddball institutional rituals, and the ways in which fantasy and reality commingle in American life, premieres his latest documentary series, Ren Faire, tonight on HBO. Produced by Elara Pictures, with executive producers including Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie and Ronnie Bronstein, the three-part series tells a Succession-like drama involving an aging “king,” George Coulam, in the midst of deciding which of his employees will take over his sprawling and lucrative Texas-based Renaissance theme park. The series follows Oppenheim’s excellent Spermworld, for which the […]

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