Independent Films

Filmmaker Magazine

• “Red is Always Surprisingly Challenging on Focus”: DP Caleb Heymann on “Stranger Things,” Season Five December 24, 2025
  The fifth and final season of Stranger Things required a full calendar year of production in Atlanta, a marathon of 240 shooting days that will bring the beloved Netflix series to a close with eight super-sized episodes. A job of that scale and duration is an arduous undertaking that could rightfully intimidate any crewmember. For […]
  Matt Mulcahey
• The 8th Annual Kevin Corrigan Episode, Back To One, Episode 372 December 23, 2025
  Kevin Corrigan, the consummate actor, true student of the craft, friend of all actors, the best friend of Back To One, the very first guest of this podcast, returns for the 8th time in what might be his most vulnerable and relatable episode yet. He generously details a crisis he had acting on a series […]
  Peter Rinaldi
• Noah Baumbach on “Jay Kelly” December 19, 2025
  30 years after his debut feature Kicking and Screaming (1995), writer-director Noah Baumbach, having crafted a notable career both in Hollywood and outside of it, has made his softest film yet, and that’s not meant as a pejorative. George Clooney stars as a fading movie star who embarks on a European trip to attend a […]
  Erik Luers
• 30 Years On, The Heat Is Around The Corner. And In Several TV Shows December 19, 2025
  Released 30 years ago, Michael Mann’s Heat is an almost-three-hour-long odyssey through Los Angeles and the minds of two ideologically opposed men who inhabit it. Codes are established and broken, thrills are tempered by sobering terror, paths are chosen and exit routes mapped. If high-level thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) has steeled himself to […]
  Gayle Sequeira
• CCR (Claustrophobic Control Rooms): DP Barry Ackroyd on “A House of Dynamite” December 18, 2025
  In Netflix’s A House of Dynamite, the United States’ government and military chain of commands scramble to respond as a ballistic missile of unknown origin speeds toward the Midwest. The non-linear narrative replays the final 20 minutes before impact from different perspectives, taking the viewer into the White House Situation Room, the Presidential Emergency Operations […]
  Matt Mulcahey
• DP Lukasz Zal on “Hamnet” December 18, 2025
  A tutor and a free spirit fall in love in sixteenth-century Stratford, but then Will (Paul Mescal) leaves Agnes (Jesse Buckley) for London while she raises their three children. Tragedy threatens to split them apart until Agnes sees her husband’s latest play, Hamlet. Based on the best-selling novel by Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet has been earning […]
  Daniel Eagan
• “A Lot of Women Just Think It’s Fucking Hot”: Sarah Meyohas and Courtney Podraza on Their Taboo Erotic Short “Medusa” December 18, 2025
  After taking a spontaneous dip in the South of France, visiting Swedish perfumer Mia (Elektra Kilbey) is badly stung by a jellyfish. She rushes out of the water—topless, shivering, limping—and Franck (Franck Sémonin), a local out for a stroll, leaps into chivalric action, giving the bare-chested woman the shirt off his back. Tending to her […]
  Natalia Keogan
• U.S. in Progress 2025: Poland to Park City December 17, 2025
  The 15th edition of U.S. in Progress—an industry market cum post-production prize competition held during the Polish-based Tauron American Film Festival—began on a particularly unorthodox foot this year. Though the festival’s based in the Southwestern, thousand-year-old metropolis of Wrocław, the program’s international cohort landed at Warsaw Chopin Airport, nearly 200 miles away from AFF’s home […]
  Natalia Keogan
• “My Method is Invisible Editing”: Editor Amir Etminan on “It Was Just an Accident” December 17, 2025
  From its opening head-on shot of a family driving down an unlit road to its devastating, confrontational climax, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident frequently deploys long takes to situate the audience within moral discomfort. While that formal restraint runs through the entire film, it still leaves room for a diverse editing style befitting […]
  Sabine Hoffman
• “My ‘Jaws’ Obsession Had No Boundaries”: Kleber Mendonça Filho on “The Secret Agent” December 17, 2025
  Kleber Mendonça Filho has never been shy explicating how personal memories have seeped into his professional work. Born and raised in Recife (capital of the Brazilian state of Pernambuco), the filmmaker has consistently dived into its history and, in doing so, his own history as well. While technically a narrative (featuring a remarkable cast led […]
  Erik Luers