Writer-director Hannah Peterson cut her filmmaking teeth on the sets of Sean Baker and Chloé Zhao, learning firsthand how to hone her cinematic voice and bring a fresh perspective to the screen. This can be seen in her radically empathetic debut feature film “The Graduates,” about the aftermath of a school shooting, which premiered at … Read more
Don Hertzfeldt’s “ME” is available on Vimeo On-Demand. Don Hertzfeldt’s “ME” will feel familiar to the filmmaker’s fans and admirers, with its expressive stick figures serving as our protagonists, its depiction of technological breakthroughs that cause societal disarray, and journeys through time and space that warrant repeated viewings just to take in all the ideas … Read more
The new body horror film “The Substance” from French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat is not for the squeamish. A satire about the tolls of toxic beauty culture, the film is set in a fairytale-like Hollywood. Demi Moore, in a career-best performance, stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a former A-lister who lives in a fancy apartment in the … Read more
Sometimes, when I watch a short film, particularly a documentary, I come away feeling that it could have gone on another thirty minutes or so, and I still would’ve been hooked. Lydia Cornett’s film “Fleshwork” is roughly six and a half minutes, and when it ended, I initially felt it was too short. For some … Read more
Set in a nondescript working-class suburb of Sweden, “Paradise is Burning” focuses on three sisters whose mother is terminally absent. When the school begins to suspect their mother has taken off (again) a meeting with social services looms. This ticking clock adds tension as the eldest girl Laura (Bianca Delbravo) searches for someone to stand … Read more
Parida Tantiwasadakran’s “Young People, Old People and Nothing In Between” centers on the friendship between a 7-year-old named Juice (Deedee Piamwiriyaku) with ADHD and her friend, an elderly woman named Grandma Lovely (Suwinya Kungsadan), who is slowly descending into dementia. With such a wide age gap between them and a limited understanding of everything that … Read more
As you were working with your editors over the many years that you worked on this film, how did you know this was the moment we wanted to end the film on? NR: I think there were many ways it could end. But, I remember one day in DC, Troy was reviewing footage, messaged us, … Read more
Is this your first deep dive into animation? Or a live action animation hybrid? (if yes, was that a challenge?) This is definitely my first deep dive, but my background in visual effects means I’ve dabbled in more subtle forms of animation and compositing. I was a motion graphics artist for Martha Stewart for a … Read more
Well, that forest is very beautiful. The people living there, and all of Poland, are very proud of that forest. It’s the oldest forest in Europe, and it has a lot of very natural spots that are untouched by mankind, as well as a lot of wild animals and everything. So tourists go there a … Read more
From there, we follow Allie throughout the day as she juggles appointments, medications, FaceTime calls from her mother, breakups with Tinder dates, parking disasters, and picking up her brother (David Brown), who rides along with her for a while until it’s too much to bear. While all this is happening, we see countless notifications from … Read more