“Anora” Completes Its Cinderella Story With Fairy Tale Oscars Night
The 97th Oscars ended up being a true fairy tale story for writer/director Sean Baker’s Anora, with Baker capping an already magical night after winning Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Director—in which he gave a rousing acceptance speech defending the unparalleled experience of the theater experience—by seeing Anora take the top prize, Best Picture. ...
How Director Mohammad Rasoulof Shot his Oscar-Nominated “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in Secret
Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof wanted to tell a big story — so he went small. The Seed of the Sacred Fig explores his country’s authoritarian rule, repressive justice, patriarchal dominance, and women’s rights through its impact on one family. Taking place during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, a nationwide protest sparked by the arrest of ...
“Anora” Cinematographer Drew Daniels on an Old School Approach to Modern, Misguided Love
Shot over 37 days in New York, one of this year’s awards darlings is Sean Baker’s compulsively riveting Anora, a lap-dancing underworld version of Cinderella. Mikey Madison plays the titular stripper, Anora/”Ani,” who thinks she has hit the jackpot when playboy and heir to a Russian oligarch, Ivan “Vanya” (Mark Eydelshteyn), falls in love with her. ...
How “Anora”‘s DP & Production Designer Brought a Deconstructed Cinderella to New York
Halfway through Sean Baker’s Anora, there’s a scene where exotic dancer turned newlywed Ani (Mickey Madison) is tied up and gagged with a red scarf. The dilemma is a response to her breaking the nose and slap-boxing two men questioning her marriage to a silver-spooned Russian rich boy named Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn). The scarf (and ...
Oscar-Nominated Editor Laurent Sénéchal’s High Wire Act in “Anatomy of a Fall”
After sweeping this awards season with trophies at the BAFTAs, France’s César Awards, Critics Choice, and the recent Spirit Awards, writer-director Justine Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari’s cerebral courtroom drama is headed for the home stretch, with five Academy Award nominations on the line. Anatomy of a Fall is a masterclass of filmmaking across the ...
“Ferrari” Production Designer Maria Djurkovic on Building Enzo Ferrari’s World in Michael Mann’s Racing Epic
Ferrari raced into theaters this past Christmas, and the bright red color of the iconic racing cars featured in the film seemed perfectly timed for its holiday release. Based on the 1991 nonfiction book “Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Car, The Races, The Machine,” and helmed by celebrated four-time Oscar nominee Michael Mann, Ferrari centers ...
Searching for That Ferocious “Ferrari” Sound With Supervising Sound Editor Tony Lamberti
How eager was Tony Lamberti to work on Michael Mann’s latest feature? Let’s just say the director had Lamberti, a Formula 1 enthusiast, at Ferrari. The Oscar-nominated (Inglourious Basterds), Emmy-winning (John Adams) audio engineer got his first peek at the feature about Enzo Ferrari and his iconic racing legacy back in 2015. Overseeing a mix ...
Michael Mann Confirms That “Heat 2” is His Next Movie & Adam Driver Could Star
When Michael Mann’s Heat hit theaters in December of 1995, it gifted us with the first time that Robert De Niro and Al Pacino acted in a scene together. The stars of Godfather 2 had never actually gotten a chance to play off one another, and in Mann’s Heat, while they had an entire movie to enact a brilliant, brutal ...
Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” Depicts a Writer’s Life That’s as Vital as Her Subject
Reviews are starting to pour in for writer/director Ava DuVernay’s latest film, Origin, which recently had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. DuVernay’s latest is centered on the life and work of author and journalist Isabel Wilkerson, specifically on her astonishing, Pulitzer Prize-winning 2020 book “Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents.” Wilkerson’s book was ...
Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” Unveils Her Film About Author Isabel Wilkerson & The Creation of a Masterpiece
Ava DuVernay’s latest film, Origin, is having its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 6, yet powerhouse indie studio Neon has already acquired worldwide rights to the film. Now, Neon has revealed the first look at the film centered on the life of “Caste” and “The Warmth of Other Suns” author and journalist Isabel ...
Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” Starring Adam Driver Revs Into High Gear in First Trailer
Legendary director Michael Mann (Heat, Collateral, The Insider) has been thinking about making Ferrari for decades, and now, at long last, Mann’s meticulously crafted epic about Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is here. Ferrari, which is set to have its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival this week, has dropped its first trailer. In this nearly wordless 90-second ...
How “Sanctuary” Cinematographer Ludovica Isidori Turned a Single Room Into a Dynamic Psycho-Emotional Arena
How do you make a single location subliminally consume an entire story? That was the question Italian cinematographer Ludovica Isidori had to answer in director Zachary Wigon’s sophomore film Sanctuary. Starring Christopher Abbott (Girls) as Hal, an heir to a luxury hotel empire, and Margaret Qualley (Maid), a dominatrix named Rebecca who is equal parts ...
Filmmaker Sara Dosa Captures a Couple’s Burning Passion in Her Oscar-Nominated Doc “Fire of Love”
When Sara Dosa won Best Film Documentary Director from the Directors Guild on February 18 for Fire of Love, it was no doubt an acknowledgment of the daunting task Dosa faced in shaping nearly 200 hours of 16 mm archival footage shot by her subjects, without sound, into her mesmerizing film. Fire of Love is ...
Best of 2022: Getting Sea Sick With “Triangle of Sadness” Production Designer Josefin Åsberg
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. Satirical black comedy Triangle of Sadness, writer/director Ruben Östlund’s first English-language feature, debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. The Swedish auteur is known for 2014’s Force Majeure and The Square, which ...
Getting Sea Sick With “Triangle of Sadness” Production Designer Josefin Åsberg
Satirical black comedy Triangle of Sadness, writer/director Ruben Östlund’s first English-language feature, debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. The Swedish auteur is known for 2014’s Force Majeure and The Square, which in 2017 also won the Palme d’Or and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Triangle of Sadness, like Östlund’s previous ...
“Moonage Daydream” Director Brett Morgen on Following David Bowie Down the Rabbit Hole
It’s a bit of a miracle that director Brett Morgen survived creating Moonage Daydream, his kaleidoscopic deep dive into David Bowie’s unique sound and vision. Morgen was six months into editing the film, the first project that had the full cooperation of Bowie’s estate. But assembling the massive volume of footage, some of it never ...
“Moonage Daydream” Trailer Reveals Riveting New Footage of David Bowie
“Questions have arisen such as is who he is, what is he, where did he come from, is he a creature of a foreign power, is he a creep, is he dangerous, smart, dumb, nice to his parents, real, a put-on, crazy, sane, man, woman, robot—what is this?” These are the words that open the ...
“Crimes of the Future” Trailer Reveals David Cronenberg’s Sci-Fi Horror Starring Kristen Stewart & Léa Seydoux
David Cronenberg, the visionary director behind Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, and The Fly takes his time between projects, and when he launches a new film, you can be sure it won’t be anything like his last, and, it will be must-see viewing for all film lovers. This brings us to the first teaser for his latest ...
“Flee” Director Jonas Rasmussen on His Historic Triple Oscar-Nominated Doc
Director Jonas Rasmussen remembers being a kid in Denmark and watching television news in 1990 when the first McDonald’s opened in Moscow, supposedly signifying a brave new world of post-Soviet capitalism. Rasmussen never could have imagined that the Afghan refugee standing just outside of the camera range would one day star in his acclaimed documentary ...
How “The Killing of Two Lovers” Sound Team Created an Agonizingly Tense Soundscape
The Killing of Two Lovers, written, directed, and edited by Robert Machoian, is a tale of a marriage coming undone that’s as taut and tense as a guitar string. The film opens in the moment before we believe it will earn its title. Two lovers are asleep on a bed, Niki (Sepideh Moafi) and Derek ...
