In the spirit of springtime renewal, the Durham, North Carolina-based Full Frame Documentary Film Festival returned to in-person mode for the first time since 2019. And while Full Frame presented virtual versions from 2020 through 2022, the festival was canceled altogether last year, due in large part to fiscal struggles undermining its parent, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. An April 2023 report in Duke’s The Chronicle indicated that the university would undertake a review of the Center. Members of the festival’s Advisory Committee circulated a petition on social media, helping to assure the festival’s return and, a […]

The post “…With the Giddy Feel of a College Reunion”: The Fun Frame Documentary Film Festival Returns first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Represent Justice, the organization that began as an impact campaign for Destin Daniel Cretton’s wrongful-conviction drama, Just Mercy, announced today via press release a three-year strategic plan, “a roadmap for building narrative power and infrastructure around people impacted by incarceration and creating a justice system that is focused on healing, rather than punishment.” New this year is the Speakers Bureau, which will represent “the extraordinary ecosystem of system-impacted movement leaders, exonerees, artists, campaign leaders, filmmakers, and film participants who work in partnership with Represent Justice to transform the legal system. The Represent Justice Speakers Bureau will be a full-service bureau […]

The post Represent Justice Announces New Speakers Bureau, Strategic Plan and Impact Campaign Around Clemency for Women Impacted by Mandatory Minimum Sentences first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The Tribeca Film Festival, which runs from June 5 – 16 in New York City, announced today its 2024 feature film lineup. As always there are many buzzy celebrity-focused films, from Trish Dalton and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s opening night doc, Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge to LIZA: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, directed by Bruce David Klein, to music docs featuring Sting, Prince, Linda Perry, Avicii and Detroit techno pioneer Carl Craig. And then there’s BRATS, Andrew McCarthy’s road trip doc as he reconnects with fellow members of the ’80s Brat Pack, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy and Emilio […]

The post Jeremy O. Harris and Slave Play, UFOs, Diane von Furstenberg, Anti-Putin Activists and More: The Tribeca Film Festival Announces Its 2024 Edition first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Dylan Baker is the definition of a consummate actor. For over three decades he has delivered so many incredible performances in series like The Good Wife, Damages, Hunters, films like Happiness, Selma, Spider-Man 2, and his latest, LaRoy, Texas, where he plays a professional killer. He talks about his approach toward playing despicable people, some who other actor’s wouldn’t touch. He takes us back to his beginnings, and the acting instruction that changed his work and which he still uses today. He tells a story about how the legendary theater director Nikos Psacharopoulos had a big impact on his early […]

The post “My Best Ability, In Terms of Acting, Is To Know Everything About My Character.” Dylan Baker, Back To One Episode, 287 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Currently unspooling across four episodes on HBO and continuing to stream on Max is The Synanon Fix, the latest true-crime catnip from the cable channel that’s not a juggernaut of the genre. And while the Sundance-debuting docuseries does involve the usual “suspects” (a cult, a cache of weapons, attempted murder via a venomous snake), it’s also the latest HBO Original from director Rory Kennedy and writer Mark Bailey (Ethel, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing). Which means it’s less interested in lurid details and more focused on actual individuals with an optimistic vision who are drawn into — and failed by […]

The post “The Charismatic Leader Leads People, But What Toward?”: Rory Kennedy and Mark Bailey on Their HBO Docuseries The Synanon Fix first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Accompanying his debut article in Filmmaker’s print edition, “Did You See (and Hear) That?),” Devan Scott posts today a video essay, “Why Are Movies So Dark?”, that provides visual backup for his points. “Contemporary visuals are commonly diagnosed as dark,’ ‘underexposed’ or ‘underlit’. In actuality, they describe an array of phenomena, many of them widely misunderstood,” he writes. “The most common charge, dim,’ is often used interchangeably with ‘underlit.’ Tools are frequently blamed; ‘the digital look’ is as much an accusation of modern equipment as an assessment of its apparent effects.” Watch Scott’s new video above.

The post Watch: Devan Scott’s Video Essay, “Why Are Movies So Dark?” first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Amsterdam-based, Bosnian-born filmmaker Ena Sendijarević’s two features to date, Take Me Somewhere Nice and Sweet Dreams, hone the filmmaker’s personal cinematic language while expanding the parameters of her own perspective. The former, her 2019 debut feature, follows a Dutch teen as she journeys to visit her ailing Bosnian father in the hospital. The latter, which will screen at NYC’s Metrograph beginning today, chronicles the decline of a wealthy Dutch family’s Indonesian sugar plantation at the turn of the 20th century. While her first feature explores the contours of Eastern and Western European relations—a subject Sendijarević is familiar with as a […]

The post “I Love the Kind of Cinema That [Tells You Everything] Through Images, Where Every Frame is Like a Painting”: Ena Sendijarević’ on Her Metrograph Series, Sweet Dreams first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

I typically have two problems with found footage horror movies. First, it’s often hard to believe the characters wouldn’t simply drop their cameras once the body count begins. Just as the haunted house movie must present a sufficiently logical reason for the inhabitants to remain once the voices start whispering “get out,” the found footage horror movie must posit an acceptable rationale for why the cameras keep rolling. Second, the subgenre’s veneer of reality often means some of filmmaking’s most effective tools—score, editing, composition—are sacrificed on the altar of verisimilitude. The premise of Late Night with the Devil alleviates both […]

The post “Congratulations, That Shot was Terrible”: DP Matthew Temple on Late Night with the Devil first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

While the on-the-ground horrors of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have been viewed around the world, often in real time — and even formed the basis of this year’s Best Doc Feature Oscar winner, Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol — Ukrainian-Canadian filmmaker Oksana Karpovych has chosen to take a much different and rather innovative approach to documenting the war. Intercepted premiered this year at the Berlin International Film Festival before traveling to CPH:DOX and now, tomorrow night, New Directors/New Films, and while it contains no shortage of cinematically-framed images of both devastation and defiant rebuilding, it predominantly captures our […]

The post “The Step from Being a Human to Becoming a Monster is Much Shorter than We Think”: Oksana Karpovych on Her ND/NF Doc, Intercepted first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

His work in series like Grey’s Anatomy, 13 Reasons Why, and This Is Us, has established Brandon Scott as a captivatingly talented actor. His latest is the new MAX series The Girls on the Bus, where he plays the jilted ex-lover of Melissa Benoist’s journalist character who now needs his help because he’s the new press secretary to the leading Presidential candidate. He talks about the process of building connection between two people that are supposed to have a past, and how sometimes that can be done in simple ways. He describes the impact Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini had […]

The post “Every Character We Play, Every Story We’re a Part Of, There’s a Beautiful Thing to Take From It”: Brandon Scott, Back To One, Episode 286 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.