Although his new miniseries Full Circle just premiered on Max, Steven Soderbergh has announced today that another episodic project—which he allegedly made between Magic Mike’s Last Dance and Full Circle—will be ready to watch by next week. Command Z, an eight episode sci-fi project that’s roughly 90 minutes overall, will launch on Soderbergh’s website, Extension 765, this Monday, July 17. As of right now, a trailer for Command Z is available to watch on the site. Command Z takes place sometime in the distant future and revolves around a mission that a lead scientist (Michael Cera, appearing only via screen) […]

In making my Watergate historical fiction film 18½, I always knew that coming up with a consistent musical soundtrack was going to be essential for balancing the tone of a film that swings from comedy to thriller to drama at breakneck speed. One genre of music, and indeed one song, “Brasília Bella,” is the key to unlocking not only how our team navigated the tones and themes of the film, but also reflects the scale and scope of making an indie film at the high point of a global pandemic. Around 2018, I started working on the script for 18½ […]

Several years back, Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp traveled with friends to attend an out of town wedding. Opting to scrimp on lodging costs, the duo shared a crowded hotel room with four other friends. Slate just happened to be the only girl in the group, which led to her adopting a “teeny-tiny” voice to communicate her comparative petiteness to the other men in the room. The voice, a running joke for the rest of the weekend, became the eventual creative spark that would launch a web series, children’s books and feature-length film released by A24.   Soon thereafter, the first […]

Two European families—one Danish, one Dutch—meet during a picturesque Italian vacation in Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil. Their bond is immediate, and soon enough the Dutch couple enthusiastically invite the Danes to visit them in Holland. The gesture is friendly enough, but the sincerity of the statement isn’t necessarily taken at face value.  Shortly after the Danes—Bjørn (Morten Burian), Louisa (Sidsel Siem Koch) and their daughter Agnes (Liva Forsberg)—return to their well-kept abode, they receive a postcard in the mail. As it turns out, the Dutch family was completely serious about their offer, inviting them to visit their home in […]

When 16-year-old Julius Tate, Jr. was killed during a SWAT raid by undercover Columbus police officers in December of 2018, citizens swiftly gathered to protest the unjust killing of a child. One year later, during an anniversary vigil mourning Tate’s loss, Ingrid Raphaël, co-creator of No Evil Eye and Film Futura, and Melissa Gira Grant, a New York-based reporter covering police brutality, came together to co-direct and collaborate on They Won’t Call It Murder, a documentary short from Field of Vision that captures the enduring grief and activism that surviving families of police violence undertake. The film, embedded above, makes […]

With the Sundance Native Lab having returned to a (hybrid) in-person model for the first time in two years, Filmmaker asked 2022 fellows to reflect on their recent experiences through short diary entries. Read the rest of the 2022 cohort’s responses.  It’s an interesting thought process trying to find the right words to describe my time at the Sundance Film Festival’s Native Film Lab. From the beginning. there was an obvious feeling of kismet, an almost too good to be true energy to have when going into any creative development lab, let alone one from an institute like Sundance. But I guess […]

With the Sundance Native Lab having returned to a (hybrid) in-person model for the first time in two years, Filmmaker asked 2022 fellows to reflect on their recent experiences through short diary entries. Read the rest of the 2022 cohort’s responses.  Sundance Native Lab was a transformative time that deeply reaffirmed my practice, giving me confidence in my work that I never had before. A huge part of it was being grounded by other Indigenous writers in my cohort and in the care of such amazing leaders such as Moi—I felt I was in a safe space to share my script in its […]

With the Sundance Native Lab having returned to a (hybrid) in-person model for the first time in two years, Filmmaker asked 2022 fellows to reflect on their recent experiences through short diary entries. Read the rest of the 2022 cohort’s responses.  Before the fellowship, I was feeling anxious. It’s a new environment with new people, cool people. I consider myself introverted, and thus out of my comfort zone. I was still in disbelief that I got chosen for the Full Circle Fellowship; I couldn’t believe that people would want to listen to me. I wasn’t sure of my voice as an […]

Gabe Klinger previously wrote at Filmmaker about the making of his Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater (2013), which is now available on the Criterion Channel. Here, he recounts the last nine years of what he describes as “his sometimes uneasy path as a feature filmmaker” and discusses his latest project. — Editor  It’s approaching a decade since I shared some anecdotes in these pages about directing my debut feature, Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater. Conceived with support from Ciné+ — a French pay TV channel where one of our producers, André S. Labarthe, had a pipeline deal […]

When I saw The Lost Leonardo at the Tribeca Film Festival, I expected a documentary about art history, restoration techniques and how paintings are authenticated. I was vaguely aware of the film’s subject—the painting “Salvator Mundi,” a portrait of Jesus discovered in a New Orleans estate sale in April 2005 and later deemed a lost work by Leonardo da Vinci. What I was unaware of was the controversy over the painting’s authorship, its journey through the world of high finance and unfettered capitalism and how this made it an object of desire, a status symbol, for political actors like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed […]

One of the most understated pieces at Sundance’s New Frontier this year was Namoo, an animated short by Baobab Studios and director Erick Oh. Baobab has been pushing the boundaries of top-tier animated virtual reality since its founding in 2015, with its short immersive films growing in depth, length, and complexity and leading to a slew of awards and spun-off properties including feature films and series. Erick Oh is an award-winning director and animator from South Korea and based in California who’s worked at Pixar and with Tonko House and whose work has shown at Annecy, Anima Mundi, and other festivals. […]

There are few directorial debuts as sui generis as Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson. A kind of experimental documentary, its premise was simple: it collected unused fragments from her long and storied career as a cinematographer, mostly for non-fiction works, among them Citizen Four, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Oath, and more. There was no story, there was no clear mission statement or theme, and the viewer was left to intuit meaning between the fragments arranged seemingly at random. And it was a success, quickly ushered into the Criterion Collection and taking her from a name among non-fiction auteurs to a name auteur herself. […]

2010 began with hope, as I wrapped a small indie that looked like it might have legs. But the film soon faded into obscurity and hope faded with it. Two more efforts received little attention, and my heartache grew. But optimism sprung up again in 2015 when I collaborated with indie veteran, Mike S. Ryan, and the first film we made together got into Toronto. It felt like things were turning a corner. With barely a breath, we jumped into another. And for a moment, I saw through rose-colored glasses. Sadly, however, like with most small films, they too faded […]

I read once that Marshall Curry always thinks of his audience when developing his next film. And then I also know that other directors say, “Make a good film and people will find it.” Or as my old comedy boss at the BBC once told me: the audience don’t know what they want until you give it to them. There is a sense of truth in all of these statements, but Curry’s has stayed with me.    As soon as I started developing my film To Kid or Not To Kid — the first English-language film about the decision to […]

Once again, this year’s not-to-be-missed event at the 22nd edition of the SCAD Savannah Film Festival (October 26-November 2), the nation’s largest university-run film fest, was the Wonder Women Panel Series. Now in its third year, these always informative discussions highlight female power in the cinematic arts, from directing, to producing, to writing, to the below-the-line crafts. And for me one of the standouts was Wonder Women: Directors, featuring seven ladies behind the lens currently upending every preconceived notion about chick flicks in impressively eclectic ways. Taking place on a laidback, late Tuesday morning at a packed Gutstein Gallery, and […]

Ira Sachs will get a lot of the credit for his latest film, Frankie, an ensemble drama with an all-star cast anchored by top-billed Isabelle Huppert, playing an international movie star whos been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Many will call it “Ira Sach’s Frankie” and single him out as its main creator. But just as the film isn’t only about Huppert’s character (Brendan Gleeson, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear play her blended family), Frankie is not just about Sachs. Only one of his features, his 1996 debut The Delta, has been written solo. And four of the rest, Frankie included, have […]

Documentaries don’t have to play by the rules of fiction films. Take a non-fiction hit like Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: It doesn’t merely tell a linear story so much as jump around subjects, with Fred Rogers’ life as a basic foundation. (Compare/contrast with the forthcoming Tom Hanks-starrer A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which zeroes in on one slice of his career.) But some documentaries go way out there. The IFP 2019 panel “Out of Bounds” rounded up four creatives — two filmmakers, one editor, and a producer tasked with helping people like them find funding and distribution — […]

When Kasi Lemmons got the job of directing Harriet, a biopic about the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, she didn’t get to choose her star: That was already done for her. Cynthia Erivo, the Tony- and Grammy-winning performer and scene-stealer of Steve McQueen’s Widows, had been cast a year before the acclaimed director and actress had come on. But it didn’t take long for her to agree with the casting. “As I was doing my research, I got this picture of his woman, who is tiny, and strong, and fast, and who uses her voice to communicate, and who is a formidable […]

True crime has been having a moment, as they say, for a while now. In a way it’s never not been having a moment, but the genre has rapidly evolved in the digital age, when more information is available to more people, when conspiracy theorists run wild on Reddit and 4chan, and when there’s simply more content being produced. All this means not only more crime content, but also shows and movies that are more thoughtful, more creative, and even more conscious of ethical or moral quandaries that may crop up in the process of covering true crimes. The panel […]

Documentaries have been making bank at the box office the last couple years, which is heartening for anyone worried the blockbusters are the only game in town. Still, you don’t necessarily have to see small, intimate fare like Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, RBG and Three Identical Strangers on a giant screen. You can’t say the same about Free Solo and Apollo 11. One finds cutting-edge cameras hanging alongside mountain climber Alex Honnold; the other unearths 65mm footage of the eponymous spaceflight. Both played IMAX theaters, and they were an even better fit on the world’s biggest screens than the […]