How Filipino Filmmaker Keith Sicat is Using Quarantine to Help Fellow Filmmakers (And Entertain Himself in the Process)

“The beautiful thing is, you have to keep occupied right?” So says Filipino writer/director Keith Sicat, speaking from the six-week-long lockdown in Manila.

With three projects primed to go into production at the beginning of the year, Sicat now spends in time between project development, teaching filmmaking, and keeping his creative juices flowing on mini-projects with his young sons. “We started animating his toys, doing stop motion stuff around the house. It was something really fun and it was creative.

Black Panther Co-Writer Joe Robert Cole on Writing & Directing His New Netflix Feature All Day and a Night

“Great stories have great characters, and the key to great characters is empathy,” says writer-director Joe Robert Cole, whose latest film, All Day and a Night, is now streaming on Netflix. “Every film, television show, or story that I work on, I approach from character first and let that lead the way.” 

All Day and a Night is a young black man’s coming of age drama,

Writer/Director Eliza Hittman on her Bracing, Brilliant Film Never Rarely Sometimes Always

When Eliza Hittman, writer/director of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, took the stage after the premiere of her film at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24th of this year, she was greeted with rapturous applause. She and the stars of her film have gained critical acclaim for her intimate, powerful portrayal of one teenager’s perilous journey of the soul. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is about the challenges facing 17-year-old Autumn (Sidney Flanigan),

Writer/Director Rashaad Ernesto Green on his Bracing Love Story Premature

When Rashaad Ernesto Green and Zora Howard sat down to write a feature that Howard would star in and Green would direct, the pair already knew it would be a love story. No, Howard and Green are not a couple; they worked together on Green’s debut feature Gun Hill Road (2011) and on his 2008 short Premature. The two artists simply wanted to create “what we felt was missing in the current cinematic climate especially with relation to black stories,” says Green.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire Writer/Director Celine Sciamma on her Masterpiece

French writer-director Céline Sciamma, whose first three features, Water Lilies (2007), Tomboy (2011) and Girlhood (2014), established her unique voice with visually compelling depictions of coming of age, gender identity and the intimacy of girls’ relationships, has created a masterpiece with her fourth film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. A sumptuous lesbian romance set in France in 1760, Portrait of a Lady on Fire won the best screenplay award and the Queer Palm at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and a host of year-end critics’ accolades.

Writer/Director Brenda Chapman on her Beguiling new Feature Come Away

Oscar-winning animation artist, writer, and director Brenda Chapman had never considered doing live-action before she read the script for Come Away, which came from first-time screenwriter Marissa Kate Goodhill. She was taken by the story, which is a “what if” tale, suggesting the origins for both Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland come from Victorian brother and sister Peter and Alice (Jordan Nash and Keira Chansa) who use their imaginations,

The Photograph Writer/Director Stella Meghie on Making Movies About Black Love

Director Stella Meghie has been on an accelerated rise in just these past few years. After an impressive feature debut with her 2016 indie comedy-drama Jean of the Joneses, the filmmaker followed up the next year with a studio picture, the YA adaptation Everything, Everything. After a return to indie filmmaking with 2018’s The Weekend, Meghie is once again working in the studio sphere—The Photograph is a Universal release (it premieres on February 14,

How Sundance Award-Winning Feature I Carry You With Me Came Together

The film I Carry You With Me (Te Lloevo Conmigo) landed in the NEXT category at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival with buzz about its great potential, as it was the first narrative directed and co-written by documentarian and Academy-Award nominee Heidi Ewing. It found an audience and great success in Park City. By the end of the fest, it had a distribution deal through Sony Pictures Classics in partnership with Stage 6,

Writer/Director/Star Numa Perrier on Her Autobiographical Sex Work Film Jezebel

Though filmmaker Numa Perrier only spent four years of her life in Las Vegas, those formative years being surrounded by adult vocations served as the backbone for her autobiographical ’90s-set film, Jezebel (now available on Netflix). Not only did Perrier write, direct, and produce, but she also stars as her older sister (executive producer Livia Perrier), who used to work as a phone sex operator and with whom Perrier shared cramped living quarters.

Sam Mendes & Screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns on Their Epic WWI Drama 1917

1917 is the story of an urgent message and the two WWI soldiers who have to deliver it to prevent hundreds of their fellow British troops from walking into a trap. We accompany them on an arduous, dangerous journey in what appears to be one long, breathtaking shot. In an interview with The Credits, director Sam Mendes and his co-screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns talked about the research they did for the film and how they crafted this meticulously constructed,

Best of 2019: Writer/Director Noah Baumbach on his Devastating Marriage Story

*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019. Happy Holidays!

Writer/director Noah Baumbach’s substantial body of work has often explored families in all their painful, darkly funny dysfunction, evolving from the perspective of an adolescent witness to the break-up of his parents in his 2005 second feature, the Oscar-nominated The Squid and the Whale, to the poignant, middle-aged observations of a son coming to terms with his estranged family and self-absorbed father in 2017’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).

Best of 2019: Craig Mazin on Getting the Details Right for the Shocking Chernobyl

*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019. Happy Holidays!

In April 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded, sending radiation into the atmosphere and ultimately causing many radiation-related deaths. While the disastrous accident, attributed to faulty reactor design and insufficiently trained operators, is widely known, the details of its aftermath are less so. Screenwriter Craig Mazin looks to change this and up the knowledge base with Chernobyl,

Screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns on Helping Sam Mendes Write his WWI Epic 1917

“The third time,” director Sam Mendes said to screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns when asking her to co-write 1917 with him, “is the charm.” And in a film that shows how random luck is as much a factor in surviving war as anything else, he was right.

Wilson-Cairns had originally come to his attention through a combination of a well-regarded script on “the Black List” — that rundown of the best crop of unproduced spec scripts — with a project called Aether.

Actor, Writer, and Producer Reggie Lochard on his Passion Project

Actor, screenwriter, and producer Reggie Lochard has a lot going on. He’s currently filming his passion project, “A” for Alpha., which he wrote, produced, and stars in. Last week, Lochard sat down with the Motion Picture Association’s Vice President for Multicultural and External Affairs, John Gibson, at the third annual New York State Multicultural Creativity Summit. The Summit was co-hosted by the Empire State Development, Motion Picture Association, and Ghetto Film School,

Writer/Director Noah Baumbach on his Devastating Marriage Story

Writer/director Noah Baumbach’s substantial body of work has often explored families in all their painful, darkly funny dysfunction, evolving from the perspective of an adolescent witness to the break-up of his parents in his 2005 second feature, the Oscar-nominated The Squid and the Whale, to the poignant, middle-aged observations of a son coming to terms with his estranged family and self-absorbed father in 2017’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).

Waves Writer/Director Trey Edward Shults & Stars Kelvin Harrison & Taylor Russell on Their Powerful Drama

From the moment the new film Waves had its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in August, it started getting awards mentions. Touted were the emotional intensity and authenticity of the script by writer/director Trey Edward Shults, and the powerhouse performances served up by an ensemble cast that included stars Kelvin Harrison, Taylor Russell, Lucas Hedges, and Sterling K. Brown. The story centers on the members of one South Floridian family, and how their personal challenges lead variously to trauma,

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil Screenwriter Linda Woolverton on Shaping Strong Female Leads

She’s back! Maleficent, the great horned fairy, is lighting up the screen once again in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, the sequel to the 2014 Disney hit. Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning return as Maleficent and Aurora, respectively, and are joined on this journey by Michelle Pfeiffer, who portrays the villainous Queen Ingrith. When Aurora becomes engaged to the queen’s son, Ingrith sets in motion a diabolical plan to take the Moors,

Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns & Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Jake Bernstein on The Laundromat

Steven Soderbergh’s new film The Laundromat boasts a stellar cast. Meryl Streep, Antonio Banderas, Jeffrey Wright, and Gary Oldman are all part of Soderbergh’s latest, which is currently streaming on Netflix. Though shown through a decidedly absurdist lens, the film is based on some very serious and true stories about how the rich and powerful of the world manipulate and perpetuate a corrupt financial system. Longtime Soderbergh collaborator and screenwriter Scott Z.

Writer/Director Jill Culton on her Animated Feature Abominable

At the beginning of the new animated feature Abominable, tomboy Yi (Chloe Bennett) is grieving for her dad, who has passed away. When she finds a wounded Yeti hiding on the roof of her apartment building, she names him Everest, after where he’s from, and determines he needs help getting back to the famed mountain. She and her friends Peng (Albert Tsai) and Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor), travel all the way across China to get him back home.

How the Spider-Man: Far From Home Writers Crafted a Swinging Summer Hit

They first worked together on TV satire American Dad, then mastered the dysfunctional dark comedy of Community before breaking into features by subverting superhero conventions with their neurotic title character in The Lego Batman Movie. Now, screenwriters Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna are riding high as the team who scripted Spider-Man: Far From Home. The rare summer hit that’s won over critics as well as audiences,