Between the Temples, co-written by C. Mason Wells and director Nathan Silver, follows a spiritually conflicted cantor (Jason Schwartzman) who finds his faith somewhat revitalized when his grade school music teacher (Carol Kane) enrolls as his latest adult bat mitzvah student. Editor John Magary discusses how he approached cutting Between the Temples, particularly when it came to navigating the film’s heavy use of improv. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired […]

Archival footage and previously unseen home movies lend a new perspective of Christopher Reeve’s rise to stardom in Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. Editor Otto Burnham shares his approach to cutting Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s doc, which makes it Sundance 2024 debut in the festival’s Premieres section. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job?  Burnham: I was rollerblading badly in East London on a bright, chilly January […]

Premiering in the NEXT section of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Desire Lines presents the time-traveling journey of an Iranian-American trans man, utilizing a vast archive of queer images in order to transport him between time and space. Filmmaker and queer scholar Jules Rosskam also served as the film’s co-writer, producer and editor. Below, he describes why he always opts to edit his own work, the various artists that inspire him and a reoccurring motif the film contains that revealed itself during the edit. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you […]

Born and raised in the Bronx, rapper Kemba guides viewers through some of the largest issues involving rap lyrics, freedom of speech and the First Amendment in As We Speak, the directorial debut of J.M. Harper. Looking at cases both in the U.S. and internationally, Harper’s documentary poses insightful questions about who is protected, or perhaps left vulnerable, by these legislative battles. Emma Backman, who previously collaborated with Harper on a series of commercials, discusses her experience cutting the film, which served as one of her first major feature-length projects as an editor. See all responses to our annual Sundance […]

Debra Granik, whose most recent work was the 2018 Sundance premiere Leave No Trace, returns to documentary with Conbody VS Everybody, an episodic series that marks her first entry in the medium. The series follows Coss Marte, an ex-convict who starts a gym with the aim of breaking the cycle of recidivism and fending off gentrification in New York City’s Lower East Side. Editing the series is Tory Stewart, editor of Stray Dog, Granik’s 2014 documentary, and also a contributor on Leave No Trace and Winter’s Bone. Below, she talks about how the edit and the series evolved over many years and the time capsule […]

Director Alessandra Lacorazza’s In the Summers follows two sisters who, over several formative summers, visit their caring but tempestuous father in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The cast includes Lio Mehiel, who won an acting prize at last year’s Sundance for Mutt, as well as Sasha Calle and René Pérez Joglar (also known as Residente, co-founder of the rap outfit Calle 13). Adam Dicterow, whose previous credits include the aforementioned Mutt, as well as Dear Evan Hansen, and HBO’s Succession, served as editor. Below, he talks about why the film moves through different styles and recalls the editing room deliberations about the film’s ending. […]

After Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte’s term comes to an end, the promise of democracy and threat of increased authoritarianism sends droves of citizens into the street to campaign for Liberal Party candidate Leni Robredo. Filmmaker Ramona S. Díaz captures the lead-up and aftermath of this critical election in her film And So It Begins, a companion to her 2020 doc A Thousand Cuts, about journalist Maria Ressa, who risks her life in order to vocally criticize Duterte’s involvement in the war on drugs. Below, editor Aaron Soffin discusses how he came onto the project only five months ago, trained under […]

With Penelope, Mel Eslyn, director of last year’s Biosphere and a producer who has worked with the Duplass brothers and Lynn Shelton, enters the world of episodic series. The series follows a 16-year-old girl who, feeling out of place in the world, ventures into the wilderness. Penelope will screen as part of Sundance’s Episodic Pilot Showcase. Below, editor Celia Beasley discusses the importance of Washington state’s indie film community and how the series reignited her love of the outdoors. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? […]

Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi first co-directed the short Solar Eclipse, and they have teamed up again for In the Land of Brothers, a feature debut for each. The film tells the story of three members of an Afghan family who flee to Iran as refugees and struggle to find acceptance and security. In The Land of Brothers‘ editor is Hayedeh Safiyari (A Separation, The Salesman), who has edited many of contemporary Iran’s best-known filmmakers. Below, she discusses the novel challenges of editing a film with sharply delineated chapters and the importance of an editor connecting emotionally to the script. See […]

In Reinas, director Klaudia Reynicke (Love Me Tender) returns to her childhood home of Lima to tell the story of a mother and her two daughters attempt to reconcile with the estranged father before seeking greener pastures in the United States. Below, editor Paola Freddi, whose previous credits include the Venice premieres A Espera (2015) and Monica (2022), discusses her collaboration with Reynicke and how she approaches her craft. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your […]

In a Violent Nature, the directorial debut of Chris Nash and a Sundance 2024 Midnight selection, puts a twist on the slasher film by staying close to the killer. Instead of the shenanigans in the secluded cabin with vaguely menacing sounds from outside, it shows us the killer trekking toward the distant voices. The film also marks the graduation of editor Alex Jacobs, who worked on titles, graphics and credits on the V/H/S film to lead editor on another director’s project. Below, he shares his serendipitous introduction to the director and how his love of lo-fi beats helped him in editing. […]

Malu is a mercurial actress living with her conservative mother in a Rio de Janeiro slum while trying to navigate her strained relationship with her own daughter in Pedro Freire’s multigenerational family drama, Malu. The film is the feature debut of director Pedro Freire. Serving as editor is Marilia Moraes, whose credits include the recent Medusa and Petra Costa’s Elena. Below, Moraes dives deep into her process and what the particularities of the film required in the editing room, including the need to construct its rhythms around the performers. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you […]

The feature debut of writer-director India Donaldson, Good One follows 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) during a weekend camping trip in the Catskills with her father and his oldest friend. As the two men continuously clash throughout their extended hike, Sam becomes uneasily aware of the frailty of male egos, even amid a landscape that ostensibly shields the group from broader societal pressures. Serving as the film’s editor (as well as a producer), Graham Mason tells Filmmaker about the challenges and rewards of cutting a film that revolves around a pointedly un-chatty central character, as well as his affirmed hunch that […]

When her boyfriend travels to Ukraine in order to care for his sick father, 23-year-old Daokta (Kota Johan) finds herself roaming around New York City, finding both community and adversity in Tendaberry, the feature debut from writer-director Haley Elizabeth Anderson.  Tendaberry is also editor Stephania Dulowski’s first feature-length project. Below, she describes how she approached cutting Anderson’s film, which premieres during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in the NEXT program.  See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes […]

Seven years after the premiere of A Moment in the Reeds, Finnish-British director Mikko Mäkelä has followed up with the Sundance World Dramatic Competition Sebastian. For his second film, Mikko Mäkelä plunges the viewer into the life of a novelist who, first as research for his own novel and then for the thrills the double life grants him, enters the world of sex work.  Editor Arttu Salmi, whose previous work includes the TIFF 2023 premiere The End We Start From and both the New Man and Degeneration installments of Dau, discusses the unique circumstances of editing Sebastian on two Avids and how he found the film in the […]

Tackling a timely but under-discussed contemporary issue in both the United States and Canada, journalists Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie (A Girl Named C) investigate a string of abuses and missing persons cases at an indigenous residential school in Sugarcane. The film, naturally, spends a great deal of time with indigenous peoples, and the filmmakers sought to maintain evidence of the deep culture and community of their subjects. Below, editor Nathan Punwar explains how they reconciled that goal with the need to keep the film moving. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why […]

While tripping on mushrooms during the summer before her first semester of college, Elliott (Maisy Stella) encounters a future version of herself (Aubrey Plaza) in My Old Ass, the sophomore feature from writer, director and EP Megan Park. What ensues is a process of self-discovery that eschews scientific conventions of time and space. Jennifer Vecchiarello delves into her experience cutting Park’s film, where her duties included “teasing out the relationships” between characters and utilizing temp ADR and voiceover during the edit. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: In terms of advancing your film from its […]

The prospect of creating personal AI avatars to comfort loved ones after death is the premise of Eternal You, a film by co-directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck premiering at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. Below, co-editors Anne Juenemann and Lisa Zoe Geretschläger discuss how they divvied up the workload while being based between Berlin and Vienna, with Block and Riesewieck also splitting their time between the two cities. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What […]

Girls Will Be Girls, the feature debut from writer-director Shuchi Talati, follows a teenage girl named Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) as she navigates her sexual awakening while attending boarding school in the Himalayan mountains. Her domineering mother (Kani Kusruti), however, wishes to put a stop to Mira’s exploration of her autonomous desires. Editor Amrita David, who also cut Alice Diop’s excellent 2022 film Saint Omer, discusses how her Indian heritage and editing intuition proved to be enormous boons to the film’s final form. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up […]

When Russia invaded Ukraine, artists Anya Stasenko, Slava Leontyev and Andrey Stefanov chose to stay behind and fight. Along with their friends Brendan Bellomo and Aniela Sidorska in the United States, they have made their feature filmmaking debut documenting their lives during wartime and their art. Below, Bellomo, who served as co-director and editor, and Sidorska, who also produced, explain how they came to shape the film’s narrative and built intimacy with the on-screen subjects while coordinating across three continents. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor […]