Beyond Cleverness – A Cheater’s Guide for Embracing Innocence: An Interview with Alejo Moguillansky (Part 2) Hamed Sarrafi November 2024 Interviews Alejo Moguillansky is the kind of filmmaker who doesn’t just think outside the box – he tears it apart, reimagines it, and then dances around whatever remains. There’s something fearless about his approach to c...
An Interview with Pia Marais Gary M. Kramer November 2024 Interviews South African writer/director Pia Marais travels deep into the Brazilian jungle for Transamazonia, her hypnotic fourth feature. Rebecca (Helena Zengel) is a teenager who has been practicing faith healing wi...
Illusionary Mirror: An Interview with Kumar Shahani Arindam Sen November 2024 Interviews This conversation took place at Kumar Shahani’s residence in Kolkata on a balmy afternoon in January 2024. Shahani was visibly ailing but the mind fecund as ever. The backdrop of the meeting was a chance encoun...
An Interview with Francesco Costabile Gary M. Kramer November 2024 Interviews Director and cowriter Francesco Costabile’s Familia, which premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is an intense drama inspired by true events. Licia (Barbara Ronchi) lives with her two young sons, ...
An Interview with Haobam Paban Kumar Aditya Shrikrishna August 2024 Interviews In plain terms, AFSPA expands to Armed Forces Special Powers Act, an act of the Indian Parliament that grants special powers to the Indian army to maintain law and order in “disturbed areas”. But there is nothi...
Interview with Celina Murga Gary M. Kramer August 2024 Interviews Argentine writer/director Celina Murga has made a series of intriguing character studies over the course of her career starting with her debut feature, Ana and the Others in 2003. Five years later, her film A W...
Interview with Florence Delay, Bresson’s Joan of Arc Sally Shafto August 2024 Interviews Florence Delay (b. 1941), novelist and performer, is most well-known for playing Joan of Arc in Robert Bresson’s Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc (The Trial of Joan of Arc, 1962). Delay also narrated the French versio...
An Interview with Antoine Chevrollier Gary M. Kramer August 2024 Interviews For his feature film debut, Block Pass, which premiered at Cannes this year, director Antoine Chevrollier reteams with actor Sayyid El Alami who starred in his 2022 TV miniseries, Oussekine. In this powerfu...
An Interview with Graham Swon Joshua Bogatin August 2024 Interviews There could hardly be a less auspicious way to start a filmmaking career than as a producer on a Matías Piñeiro film, and it wasn’t long after producing Hermia and Helena (2016) that Graham Swon began to clearl...
An Interview with Jonás Trueba Gary M. Kramer August 2024 Interviews Jonás Trueba won the Label Europa Cinemas prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for his feature The Other Way Around, about a couple’s separation party. The film costars – and is cowritten with – Itsaso Ara...
An Interview with Federico Luis Gary M. Kramer August 2024 Interviews Simón de la montaña (Simon of the Mountain, 2024) grabs viewers from its opening moments as the title character (Lorenzo Ferro), a 21-year-old, tries to help a group of disabled youths caught in a windstorm. Th...
An Interview with Jon Bell Gary M. Kramer May 2024 Interviews Expanded from his 2020 short of the same name, The Moogai is writer/director Jon Bell’s allegorical horror film about the Stolen Generation – the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families betwee...
“I like characters who can’t express themselves sometimes”: An Interview with Kazik Radwanski Susana Bessa May 2024 Interviews Matt and Mara (2024) was my first and last screening at this year’s Berlinale. I can’t remember the last time I saw the same film twice at a film festival. Very little could have prepared me for the beautifully...
An Interview with Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero Gary M. Kramer May 2024 Interviews Fernanda Valadez made a stunning feature directorial debut with Identifying Features (2020). For her sophomore effort, Sujo (2024), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, where it won the Worl...
Sewn Into the Margins: An Interview with Marie Craven Dirk de Bruyn May 2024 Interviews The following interview with Marie Craven originated from an online interview after a film class viewing of a program of her films as we moved out of Covid. The Zoom transcriptions of that event were trawled an...
“I Did Not Want to Make a Film About Victims”: An Interview with Lola Arias Silvia Spitta & Gerd Gemünden May 2024 Interviews “Yo no quería hacer una pelicula sobre víctimas” – with these words director Lola Arias described to us her approach to making a film about a dozen former inmates of various Buenos Aires women prisons. Reas, wh...
An Interview with Meryam Joobeur Gary M. Kramer May 2024 Interviews Meryam Joobeur earned an Oscar nomination for her 2018 short film, Brotherhood, about a Tunisian family grappling with the unexpected return of their son, Malek (Malek Mechergui). Malek, who has been gone for o...
Susie Dee, Trudy Hellier and Patricia Cornelius talk Shit with interviewer Cerise Howard Cerise Howard May 2024 Interviews Written by Patricia Cornelius, one of Australia’s most celebrated playwrights and a Windham-Campbell prize winner, the micro-budget Melbourne feature Shit began life as a play (2015), with its powerhouse cast o...
Spiritual Connections, Analog Exuberance, and the Joys of Presence: An Interview with Nathan Silver Brigitta Wagner May 2024 Interviews The 74th Berlin International Film Festival could not have taken place on a more politicised stage. Not only did the festival reflect, as it typically does, the preoccupations of the world in the films selected...
A place to live in: An Interview with Leonor Teles Susana Bessa January 2024 Interviews Leonor Teles’s mirror-surfaced, headily constructed Baan opens at a moment of contemplation. Against the backdrop of a lilac-infused blue cityscape of the King Power MahaNakhon, the legendary Bangkok skyscraper...
Crime and Choreography: An Interview with Rodrigo Moreno Hamed Sarrafi January 2024 Interviews Despite Argentina's present socio-political and economic situation being shrouded in uncertainty and instability, its film industry is robust, consistently producing remarkable works. Contemporary Argentine cin...
Gazing into the Abyss: An interview with Wei Shujun Maja Korbecka January 2024 Interviews I first talked with Wei Shujun back in 2020 when his debut film, Yema fenzhong (Striding into the Wind), had its US theatrical release. However, we met in person only three years later in Cannes after the premi...
“The Way We Are Looked at Transforms Us”: An Interview with Catherine Breillat Savina Petkova January 2024 Interviews When Last Summer (2023) premiered at the Cannes Main Competition earlier this year, everyone expected a scandalous film. A massive age gap, incestuous themes, and, boy, does the internet love such discourse! Bu...
An Interview with Martín Rejtman James Vaughan January 2024 Interviews Nine-tenths of our movements obey habit and automatism. It is anti-nature to subordinate them to will and to thought. - Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer The cinema of Martín Rejtman is a cinema...
Interview with Martín Shanly Gary M. Kramer January 2024 Interviews Although he has written and directed only two features, Martín Shanly has developed a distinctive voice in Argentine cinema. His style is low-key, and his character studies showcase troubled heroes. His two fil...
Crossing Borders into Abstraction: an Interview with Paul Winkler Dirk de Bruyn January 2024 Interviews In 2022 the National Film and Sound Archive acquired the hand-made filmmaking material Paul Winkler constructed to make his innovative films from the the 1960’s to the present. Winkler is packing up his practic...
Steve Doughton and Jon Raymond On Earthlings Nolan Kelly January 2024 Interviews In the United States, regional filmmakers rarely get the same attention as their big-city counterparts, at least until they premiere in New York or L.A. This denial of certain geographic perspectives is bound u...
An Interview with Delphine Girard Gary M. Kramer November 2023 Interviews A good short film uses time to support the story. Given the brief running time, a filmmaker must establish a setup, keep viewers in suspense, and deliver a satisfying payoff in, 15 minutes. Short films evoke an...
Writing Like Water: An Interview with Paul Preciado Mike Hoolboom November 2023 Interviews Paul Preciado is an aphorism machine, the David Bowie of contemporary philosophy. Like other contemporary thinkers (what used to be called “public intellectuals” – Andrea Long Chu, Hito Steyerl), he writes in e...
Mapping Global Horror: Academic roundtable Amanda Barbour November 2023 Interviews Mapping Global Horror: Australia, Japan and Beyond brought world-leading scholars and filmmakers to Wurundjeri country for a two-day conference to navigate how the titular genre moves through time, space and cu...
Mapping Global Horror: Filmmaker roundtable Amanda Barbour November 2023 Interviews At the intersection of theory and practice, Mapping Global Horror: Australia, Japan and Beyond put horror scholars in dialogue with filmmakers and festival producers. This enabled audiences to understand new di...
Our Body is a Battleground: An Interview with Claire Simon Öykü Sofuoğlu November 2023 Interviews This year's Berlinale was marked by Nicolas Philibert's surprising victory with his modest and intimate documentary about a Parisian psychiatric institution, which prompted us to question the established bounda...
“Irritation Is the Most Important Tool Any Artist Has”: An Interview with Jessica Hausner Jaimey Fisher & Gerd Gemünden November 2023 Interviews In a review of Club Zero, Jessica Hausner’s latest feature, which premiered in Competition at Cannes this year, Charles Bramesco calls the director “Austria’s most fearless button-pusher.” Given that her compat...
Shame on Dry Land: An Interview with Axel Petersén and Joel Spira Gary M. Kramer November 2023 Interviews Shame on Dry Land, by Swedish writer/director Axel Petersén, is a flinty noir set in sunny Malta. The film, which had its World Premiere at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, is as slippery as its protagonist, ...
Groundbreaking Cinephilia: A Conversation with Julien Rejl, Artistic Director of the Directors’ Fortnight Maria Giovanna Vagenas November 2023 Interviews With a gaze that radiates a dreamy but determined freshness, the beautiful Leonor Silveira in Manoel de Oliveira's Abraham's Valley (Vale Abraão, 1993) graces the poster of this 55th edition of the Directors’ F...
“Can You Prefigure Reality?”: A Conversation with Christoph Hochhäusler on his new film, Bis ans Ende der Nacht (Till the End of the Night) Marco Abel August 2023 Interviews Christoph Hochhäusler’s noirish Bis ans Ende der Nacht (Till the End of the Night) premiered on the final day of the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, capping a Competition that showcased an unusually hi...