Filmmaker Magazine
- “Fairy Tales Are the Stories We Tell Our Children to Warn Them…”: Writer/Director Kelsey Taylor on Her Suspenseful Debut Feature, To Kill a Wolf July 29, 2025For viewers watching Kelsey Taylor’s terrific debut feature, To Kill a Wolf, it’s easy to miss that its very loose source material is the 17th-century children’s fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood. Yes, there’s a girl lost in the woods, a woodsman, a grandma (arguably), and a wolf, although the latter is hardly an obvious […]Scott Macaulay
- “You Have to Commit Full-Time To It… You Will See How Good You Can Really Be”: Martin Harris, Back To One, Episode 352 July 29, 2025Martin Harris has delivered stand-out work on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Young Sheldon, NCIS: Los Angeles, Stranger Things, and now he plays the Boravian General in Superman. On this episode he describes the surprisingly efficient production that James Gunn presided over, and how it felt like “shooting a party video.” He surmises why directors keep […]Peter Rinaldi
- FIDMarseille 2025: Fascist Equestrians and Others July 25, 2025Since changing its official name from Festival International du Documentaire de Marseille to Festival International de Cinéma de Marseille, FIDMarseille has become a significant premiere-driven industry festival dedicated to the expansive genre of “creative nonfiction” to include experimental, hybrid and essayistic works, often with a political ethos. For its 36th edition, FID reaffirmed its rare […]Cici Peng
- “You Go to L.A. and Then You Start Working with Roger Corman”: DP Paul Elliott on Duster, Ken Russell and Roger Deakins July 22, 2025In Duster, an impossibly cool wheelman (Josh Holloway) and a rookie FBI agent (Rachel Hilson) join forces to take down a crime boss (Keith David) in 1970s Phoenix. If any of the creative forces behind the HBO series ever wondered if they were properly capturing the vibe of 1970s pulp, all they had to do […]Matt Mulcahey
- “We Gave Space for Each Other to Breathe”: Unicorns Star Jason Patel, Back To One, Episode 351 July 22, 2025Jason Patel is an emerging actor and artist. He plays the lead role of “Aysha” in Unicorns, opposite Ben Hardy. It’s his feature film debut. The film is co-directed by Sally El-Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd, who also wrote the screenplay. Unicorns also features Patel’s music, a true fusion of both art forms. On this […]Peter Rinaldi
- LED Walls: Working with the LED Volume for Cinematographers July 21, 2025Origin of Image-Based Lighting The LED Volume is derived from the concept of Image-Based Lighting (IBL) invented by Paul Debevec in 1998, which refers to mapping an HDR image onto a photosphere enveloped around a subject to serve as primary light source in CGI. The Light Stage 3 (2002) was the first physical set to […]Luca Cioci, Charlie Flitton, Wara Pornkulwat and Victoria K. Warren
- “I Finalized the Script Two Weeks Before the Crew Arrived”: Alexandra Simpson on No Sleep Till July 18, 2025Against the darkening skies of an imminent hurricane in Atlantic Beach, Florida, disparate characters become unmoored in No Sleep Till, the feature debut from French-American filmmaker Alexandra Simpson. Shot in the coastal enclave where she partially grew up with her father, Simpson’s film casts a “European gaze” (she was largely raised in Paris and attended […]Natalia Keogan
- Karlovy Vary 2025: Promising Young Men and Women July 16, 2025“There are so many promising debut features, then all those filmmakers go on to be jury members.” A new acquaintance was lamenting the dearth of directors under 40 with distinct styles and durable careers; I laughed, but it was a fair synopsis of a grim landscape. Per Wallace Stevens, the imagination may always be at […]Vadim Rizov
- “We Created the Film to Address How Journalism Was Perpetuating Anti-Trans Bias”: Sam Feder on Heightened Scrutiny July 16, 2025As someone who started calling myself “bigendered” decades ago, trans visibility has been both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it’s a relief to no longer have to explain being nonbinary to puzzled and often dubious cisgender folks (gay and straight alike). On the other hand, it’s infuriating to watch as one’s […]Lauren Wissot
- “If Every Art is Sacred, That Means the Act of Making Art is Itself a Sacred Thing”: David Malinsky, Back To One, Episode 350 July 15, 2025For the 350th episode of Back To One, I sat down with an actor who brings me great joy when he’s on the screen, the one and only David Malinsky. He wrote the blurb himself for this episode. It follows: Peter has only met David three times in person before. His filmography includes Onur Tukel’s […]Peter Rinaldi
