Filmmaker Magazine

“It’s a mode I have a lot of time for: being faithful to the real, but risking getting a bit fictional with it in the process.” Laura Staab (@laurastaab.bsky.social) on the Cinéstesia program at Espoo Ciné, curated by Erika Balsom (@erikaaaa.bsky.social). filmmaker.substack.com/p/so-film-is...

In the third edition of Mark Asch's FESTIGRAPHIX, we compare the metrics of this year's daylong documentaries, find the common denominator of Sandra Hüller’s recent screen presence (outside of DIGGER), and take up Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s interest in a certain modality of therapeutic care.

The next installment of Mark Asch’s FESTIGRAPHIX is here! For all those studying the relative quantities of incest, ovation, and anachronism in this season's cinematic offerings, read on...

“The earth comes to seem a pliant, transient material, acted upon by the skies.” Maxwell Paparella (@44getting.bsky.social) on Johann Lurf’s FOREVER...FOREVER, a structural film that sends the world speeding through the gate of its custom-built 65mm camera. filmmaker.substack.com/p/on-gods-ti...

Introducing FESTIGRAPHIX. To put this season's new films into context, we solicited the expert analysis of Mark Asch. Here is the first dossier of his findings.

“Norm Macdonald’s gift was to do the best imitation of himself at all times.” Adam Nayman (@brofromanother.bsky.social) on Judd Apatow’s new documentary, in which the man himself remains a cipher. filmmaker.substack.com/p/norm-macdo...

“Even before the festival began, its programming was nearly eclipsed by controversy.” Dessane Lopez Cassell on the tumultuous latest edition of FIDMarseille, which prompted questions about resistance, boycotts, and meaningful solidarity in the film community. filmmaker.substack.com/p/an-eerie-m...

“If you don't know where you've been, you don’t know where you're going.” Garrett Bradley speaks with David Greaves, whose ONCE UPON A TIME IN HARLEM documents a meeting of Harlem Renaissance luminaries convened by his father, William Greaves, in 1972. filmmaker.substack.com/p/david-grea...

“Leigh manages to capture at once our interconnectedness and the grave distance that separates us; as one narrative unfolds, countless others scaffold its realism.” Saffron Maeve on Mike Leigh's TENDER LOVING CARE. filmmaker.substack.com/p/mike-leigh...

Hugo Emmerzael speaks to Isabelle Stever and Anna Melikova about balancing fragile tenderness with political urgency in I RARELY WAKE UP DREAMING, now playing at the New York Film Festival. filmmaker.substack.com/p/isabelle-s...

from TIFF, i wrote about VR, acting as a feat of strength, and the breath of fresh air that is Matt Barats!

“So many movies this fall season are obsessed with arguing for cinema’s right to exist.” Chloe Lizotte (@celizotte.bsky.social) on I PLAY ROCKY, ELSINORE, PRIMETIME, and Big Tech's imagined crisis of cinema. filmmaker.substack.com/p/soft-skill...

“Defiance of simulacrum, defiance of verisimilitude—even in service of factual content—opens up new doors for image-making.” for @filmmakermagazine.com, i interviewed Matthew Rankin about his hilarious, surreal dive into Canadian conservative political arcana, Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney

AMOEBA director Siyou Tan has been named one of @filmmakermagazine.com's 25 New Faces of Film 2026! "Tan has an assured, intuitive sense of how to calibrate teenage mischief, angst, and sincerity." AMOEBA opens in 2027 from Dekanalog.

“Mocap allowed production to begin without knowing what the movie would look like.” James N. Kienitz Wilkins writes about making his latest film, The Misconceived, with motion capture: ”a tool to characterize the fragmented digital society in which we live.” filmmaker.substack.com/p/a-farewell...

"You're continually incentivizing people to work on the wrong projects ... and you can obviously see the knock-on effects in what's actually getting made." — Daniel Goldhaber Max Cea reports on the writer-director industrial complex: filmmaker.substack.com/p/the-myth-o...

"[THE BATTLE OF CHILE] contains the passion and poetry of telling with real interest what the people were living." To honor the passing of the great Chilean director Patricio Guzmán, we are revisiting Anthony Kaufman's 2020 interview with him: filmmaker.substack.com/p/the-indefa...

thank you so much to @filmmakermagazine.com <3 Proud to be alongside my fellow Canucks @avalonfast.bsky.social and @sophyromvari.bsky.social

Pleased to reveal @neon-rated.bsky.social's trailer for David Greaves’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN HARLEM, which revisits footage shot in 1972 by his father, William Greaves, at a gathering of Harlem Renaissance luminaries. Find Greaves in conversation with Garrett Bradley in our fall issue, out soon!

Dolly Parton and Tim Curry were "extremely intentional about their presence in the culture, wanting to leave a meaningful mark rather than simply take up space." In our weekly editor's letter, @celizotte.bsky.social pens a remembrance of both performers: filmmaker.substack.com/p/dolly-part...

"Beverly understood how to communicate with filmmakers emotionally. That changed the entire culture." — Bradford Young Kya Lou moderates a roundtable with film chemist Beverly Wood and cinematographer Bradford Young on the alchemy of color correction: filmmaker.substack.com/p/beverly-wo...

Take a deep dive into the world of Niu Lai, a bolt from the blue, outsider art blockbuster. @celizotte.bsky.social writes in our weekly editor's letter: filmmaker.substack.com/p/niu-lai-is...

An essay about Ari Aster would come back to haunt Sophie Lewis in ways she couldn't have predicted. @kimkelly.bsky.social interviews Lewis about the movie review that was unexpectedly introduced as evidence in the Prairieland ICE Detention Facility case: filmmaker.substack.com/p/how-a-film...

David Lynch @latimes.com, Fatih Akin @nybooks.com, Samy Burch @filmmakermagazine.com, Francis Ford Coppola @ Metrograph, Adam Curtis @thequietus.com … Did You See This? www.criterion.com/current/post...

"I saw the area as a stage for their ever-shifting relationship. [...] At times, it can seem like heaven; at other times, like hell." — Kiyoshi Kurosawa on THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER. Jawni Han ( @kimchimarx.bsky.social ) speaks with the J-horror auteur: filmmaker.substack.com/p/dungeon-ma...

"It's important to me that these works are earnest—not sentimental, but not coming from a place of cynicism." —Jane Schoenbrun. From our summer issue, Grace Byron interviews the director of TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA: filmmaker.substack.com/p/jane-schoe...

For those who missed it, I examined the work of indie action pioneer @ericjacobus.bsky.social for @filmmakermagazine.com.

wrote this week’s @filmmakermagazine.com newsletter on Tony, which gave me fresh eyes on Matt Johnson’s earlier work…but it’s a packed weekend for movies, so sign up to be the first to read our summer issue coverage of Camp Miasma and Late Fame next week! filmmaker.substack.com/p/working-cl...

"TONY fits neatly alongside [Matt] Johnson’s other movies, in which characters make decisions informed by the allure of masculine cultural archetypes—and the thin, often self-deluding line between alpha males and beta males." @celizotte.bsky.social writes: filmmaker.substack.com/p/working-cl...

"Twenty years ago, a movie filmed for a couple thousand bucks in the Bay Area delivered action sequences that left most Hollywood offerings in the dust." Read @jonahjeng.bsky.social 's appreciation of CONTOUR, Eric Jacobus's DIY action masterpiece: filmmaker.substack.com/p/applied-ph...

Excited to share my debut for @filmmakermagazine.com, focusing on CONTOUR and the indie action films of Eric Jacobus. filmmaker.substack.com/p/applied-ph...

"We did what we wanted to do, not what we should have done." Out from behind the paywall: B. Ruby Rich ( @brubyrich.bsky.social ) speaks to Yashaddai Owens about JIMMY, now playing @ifccenter.bsky.social and elsewhere. filmmaker.substack.com/p/the-art-of...

"This was my way of saying 'fuck it.'" Steve Macfarlane interviews Ngozi Onwurah about WELCOME II THE TERRORDOME, the first British film by a Black woman, back in theaters after 30 years: filmmaker.substack.com/p/in-the-hou...

"Persona is a very deliberate instrument for Charli, who is curious about the conditions that might destabilize it." Chloe Lizotte ( @celizotte.bsky.social ) on expectation and dissonance in Gregg Araki's I WANT YOUR SEX and Charli XCX's MUSIC, FASHION, FILM: filmmaker.substack.com/p/faceoff-gr...

"With Jennifer Lame in the editing room, Christopher Nolan has transformed the abstract into the impressionistic." Corey Atad ( @coreyatad.com ) on what Jennifer Lame's editing brings to Christopher Nolan's THE ODYSSEY: filmmaker.substack.com/p/weaving-th...

"I don't mind that people can see fingerprints on the clay or hot glue every now and then." In the latest excerpt from our summer issue, Kambole Campbell ( @kambole.bsky.social ) speaks with Emily Ann Hoffman about her delightfully bizarre animations. filmmaker.substack.com/p/disarming-...

"The festival has walked an improbable path of occupation, compromise, and survival." Sonya Vseliubska shares standouts from the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, including BLACK MONEY FOR WHITE NIGHTS & Swann Arlaud in A MAN OF HIS TIME: filmmaker.substack.com/p/spa-eclect...

"A film effectively unstuck in time, in which all events occur simultaneously, gaining shape in a storytelling style akin to recollected memory." for @filmmakermagazine.com, i wrote about Christopher Nolan's editing style and his collaboration with editor Jennifer Lame

"By refusing to condescend to his lurid B-movie material, [Sam] Neill inhabits it like a church." Adam Nayman (@brofromanother.bsky.social) writes a remembrance of Neill, who threw himself headfirst into blockbusters and B movies alike. filmmaker.substack.com/p/rememberin...

A very good mail day today!! My profile of THE FURIOUS’ Kenji Tanigaki in Filmmaker Mag (a debut for me) arrived. As did my contributor’s copy of I’M GONNA GIT YOU SUCKA (I wrote an essay for it).

"Like Odysseus, people had traveled far—from Boston, from Arizona, from Toronto." Chloe Lizotte ( @celizotte.bsky.social ) files a scene report from the opening night of Christopher Nolan's THE ODYSSEY and tries to get to the bottom of a monocultural moment: filmmaker.substack.com/p/a-long-way...

Jeffrey Wright @ebertvoices.bsky.social, John Woo @ BFI, Archivistas Salvajes @ Ultra Dogme, Babylon’13 @documentary.org, La Clef @filmmakermagazine.com, Ultraman @japantimes.co.jp, AI “sloppycats” @avclub.com … Did You See This? www.criterion.com/current/post...

“Political commitment is woven into the fabric of the cinema itself.” Botagoz Koilybaeva profiles the La Clef Revival collective, who occupied an arthouse theater in Paris to unlock a new future for cinema. From our summer issue. 📸: Chiara Marinai. open.substack.com/pub/filmmake...

“You can feel the earthiness of the East Village and the rubble, the empty lots, the abandoned buildings.” —Phil Hartman on NO PICNIC on the heels of its historic run at @filmforumnyc.bsky.social . Read David Schwartz on the film’s second life: open.substack.com/pub/filmmake...

"Diving into the archive meant confronting a history that isn't taught and that we don't really have access to." Lauren Wissot interviews Lana Daher about her film Do You Love Me, which excavates Lebanon's past through home movies and the rhythms of emotion: filmmaker.substack.com/p/do-you-lov...