Independent Films

Filmmaker Magazine

• “It Was Too Dangerous To Make This Film in America”: Eugene Jarecki on The Six Billion Dollar Man December 5, 2025
  Eugene Jarecki’s The Six Billion Dollar Man, much like its main character Julian Assange, is a doc destined to spark controversy. Jam-packed with gripping never before seen footage (much of it captured by Ecuadorian embassy CCTV) and an eclectic roster of interviewees (from Edward Snowden to Pamela Anderson), the film offers a sort of vertigo-inducing […]
  Lauren Wissot
• An Open Letter to SAIC Regarding Video Data Bank December 4, 2025
  On November 12, 2025, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) “gutted” Video Data Bank (VDB), the essential moving-image art distributor, archive and streaming platform. The elimination of 60% of its staff, including director Tom Colley, and announcement that it would as a result of this reduction no longer acquire new work, sent […]
  Angelo Madsen
• FILM FEST KNOX 2025: 96 Hours in Knoxville December 4, 2025
  The last time I visited Tennessee, I was 15, traveling around Memphis with my parents, and spent most of the time listening to In Rainbows on cheap headphones; we ate barbecue, visited my grand-uncle and toured Graceland. 17 years later, I returned to Tennessee for the third annual FILM FEST KNOX, co-founded by filmmaker Paul […]
  Vikram Murthi
• Director as Dinner Party Host: Dan Trachtenberg on “Predator: Badlands” December 4, 2025
  Architect of the three last films in the Predator franchise (the previous two being the 1719-set Prey and animated anthology film Predator: Killer of Killers), Dan Trachtenberg would be the first to tell you that many of Predator: Badlands’s gorgeous landscape shots are inspired by Terrence Malick or Sergio Leone. In the same breath, he’d […]
  Zachary Lee
• “There Were Many Fragmented Aspects to Sara Jane’s Testimony”: Robinson Devor on “Suburban Fury” December 3, 2025
  Robinson Devor’s Suburban Fury, made in collaboration with writer Charles Mudede (who also co-wrote Devor’s 2005 acclaimed narrative feature Police Beat and 2007’s provocatively disturbing Zoo), is as counterintuitively intense as its title might imply. The unconventionally riveting doc takes us on a wild and winding (car) ride back in time, via the backseat reminisces […]
  Lauren Wissot
• Composer and Musician Michael Brook on “Heat,” U2 and Hans Zimmer December 3, 2025
  Michael Brook has collaborated with some of the most influential filmmakers and musicians of the last 40 years without ever threatening to become a household name. When I spoke to the inventor and composer last month at the Warsaw Film Festival, I asked if he valued the recognition of awards bodies, to which he explained […]
  Rory O'Connor
• “One Battle After Another,” “My Father’s Shadow,” Jafar Panahi Win at 2025 Gotham Awards December 2, 2025
  International titles dominated at last night’s Gotham Awards, with films from Iran, France, the UK and Ireland, including one that was entirely Lagos-shot, winning seven of ten competitive categories. It Was Just an Accident‘s Jafar Panahi, who, it was revealed by his lawyer shortly before the event, has been sentenced in absentia to one year […]
  Scott Macaulay
• “It’s Difficult to Separate the Craft from the Career Sometimes”: Feodor Chin, Back To One, Episode 369 December 2, 2025
  Few actors have been able to consistently make a living dipping their toes in as many different mediums and genres as Feodor Chin has—film, television, theater, gaming, animation, audio books—he’s done it all. He just ended his run as “China” in the remarkable and timely play Kyoto at the Lincoln Center Theater in New York […]
  Peter Rinaldi
• Music as Nourishment: Max Richter on Scoring “Hamnet” December 2, 2025
  With Songs My Brother Taught Me (2015) and The Rider (2017), Chloé Zhao constructed tender epics out of prolonged time spent at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Much like her Oscar-winning Nomadland (2020), these films are born out of geography, setting characters yearning for freedom and belonging against vast American landscapes.. Zhao’s fifth […]
  Hugo Emmerzael
• “You Are the Character — Stop Questioning That”: Michael Chernus, Back To One, Episode 368 December 1, 2025
  From Orange Is The New Black and Severance to Spider-Man:Homecoming and Inez & Doug & Kira, Michael Chernus has been consistently delivering performances that place him as one of the most cherished character actors working today. His latest happens to be the first time he’s staring in a television series—Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy—and […]
  Peter Rinaldi