Tag: American Indie Film
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Matthew Ross’ Siberia
Matthew Ross' first foray into feature films received its world premiere debut at Sundance (read our review) in 2016, and he was quick to...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Michael Mayer’s The Seagull
We were quite surprised that The Seagull didn't drop sometime in 2017, after all, production did take place in 2015. The good news is...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life
We voiced our hope that we'd see her sometime soon when we launched our inaugural Top 10 American Indie Filmmakers Missing in Action back...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Nicolas Pesce’s Piercing
We're honestly a little surprised that Nicolas Pesce's highly anticipated sophomore film didn't drop in 2017 as filming took place earlier in the year. As...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: David Lowery’s Old Man and the Gun
He was getting ready to hit the editing dock not long after I had the chance to speak to him during the tale end...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jordana Spiro’s Night Comes On
We were pleasantly destabilized by her third, Gummo-esque short film, and as I cited back after the 2013 Sundance edition, Skin (watch here) displayed all...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Christina Choe’s Nancy
After building a half dozen short film resume, her feature film debut appears to be the result of a lot of indie blood, sweat...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Debra Granik’s My Abandonment
We likened her to Kelly Reichardt with a cinema that should sprout internationally and so we were genuinely surprised when she didn't drop into...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Josephine Decker’s Movie No. 1
Part of the new wave of idiosyncratic female auteur voices (Sophia Takal, Sarah Adina Smith, Janicza Bravo, Chloé Zhao and Eliza Hittman come to...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Anthony Mandler’s Monster
A heavyweight music video helmer for close to two decades, Anthony Mandler's list of creds reads like Jack Kerouac's Famous 'On the Road' scroll....
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Ondi Timoner’s Mapplethorpe
Well versed in the music scene, arts and technology, this docu-helmer won Sundance's Grand Jury Prize for Dig! (2004) and followed that up with...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Craig William Macneill’s Lizzie
Originally this had helmer Pieter Van Hees set to direct, but this would become Craig William Macneill's sophomore film instead. Filming on Lizzie took place in...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Nia DaCosta’s Little Woods
Possibly belonging to a Frozen River and Sin Nombre type of harrowing universe where there are no real alternatives, Nia DaCosta's directorial debut will...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Nicole Holofcener’s The Land of Steady Habits
She has been a fixture as a creative advisor, panelist and helmer who up until Toronto preemed Enough Said (2013) saw every single one...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jonathan & Josh Baker’s Kin
Prediction: James Franco will be at Sundance. The question is which of the two dozen projects in post-production is most likely to show up?...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Bill Oliver’s Jonathan
A film graduate (M.F.A. in Directing from the American Film Institute) who to this point, has had more experience working as a playwright, Bill Oliver...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Nijla Mu’min’s Jinn
In a figurative sense, Nijla Mu'min is coming out from the Middle of Nowhere (she was a Production Assistant on Ava DuVernay’s break out Sundance...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jonathan Helpert’s IO
Originally set up with thesps Elle Fanning, Diego Luna and Clay Jeter in the director's chair, IO, the Sundance Institute’s Writers Lab and the...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Reed Morano’s I Think We’re Alone Now
Now that Reed Morano won the Emmy for best director in a drama series for The Handmaid's Tale (read her remarkable process in winning...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Andrew Fleming’s Ideal Home
If Andrew Fleming's next film shores up in Park City, it'll be an almost unrecognizable American independent film landscape from the Sundance of then...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jeremy Saulnier’s Hold the Dark
A filmmaker we've been keeping tabs on since the late naughts when his Slamdance/SXSW preemed 2007's Murder Party dropped, Jeremy Saulnier played a significant creative role with...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Mélanie Laurent’s Galveston
Currently in a creative overdrive with a count of five feature films in just under a half dozen years, Mélanie Laurent began production on...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: A.J. Edwards’ Friday’s Child
A Terrence Malick school of cinema apprentice, there are certain parallels that can be drawn between the ethos, pathos or filmmaker conditioning of A.J. Edwards....
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Olivia Newman’s First Match
Every edition of the Sundance Film Festival we find at least one of them. One of the festival's superpowers is short film programming, and...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s Farming
It's been a good decade since the project arrived in draft form at both Sundance Labs, so once it premieres we'll be able to...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Miguel Arteta’s Duck Butter
Mostly working within the comedy film curriculum, two decades, and now eight feature films in, an habitual of the fest since presenting Star Maps...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Gus Van Sant’s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot
With the gigantic cluster fuck that is the sinking ship distributor The Weinstein Company, we seriously doubt that Garth Davis' Mary Magdalene will receive...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Michael Tully’s Don’t Leave Home
Austinite Michael Tully packed his bags this past spring, moving from the lobster rouge backdrop of Ocean City, Maryland to the Celtic green meadows...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: David & Nathan Zellner’s Damsel
We incorrectly labeled this guesstimate as dropping in 2017 and to be frank, we're a bit surprised that it didn't shore up at the...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Joshua Marston’s Come Sunday
A place that can be avoided by obedience to God and his commandments, the Mormons don't see what all the fuss is about like...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Ethan Hawke’s Blaze
Yet to be invited to the Sundance ball with his trio of films as a director Chelsea Walls (2001), The Hottest State (2006) and Seymour:...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Khalik Allah’s Black Mother
Packing a fervent wallop only with his still photography (check out his just published hard cover Souls Against the Concrete) we were initially introduced Khalik Allah via the Filmmaker...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Joshua Leonard’s Behold My Heart
If Joshua Leonard's third film gets inserted in the '18 edition, it'll be the project that had the luxury of having the longest post...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Felix van Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy
We know him for his Directors' Fortnight preemed The Misfortunates (2009) (and the publicity stunt on the Croisette as well), and international audiences discovered...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jesper Ganslandt’s Beast Of Burden
For those who simply can't get enough of, or bypassed what a Cessna misadventure might look like with covert operations and covert opportunities seen...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Sam Levinson’s Assassination Nation
It's been a long seven years between features for Sam Levinson. Having started his film career with one of the best films from 2011...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Gareth Evans’ Apostle
A bromance between the festival and this Welsh started back when The Raid: Redemption received it U.S. premiere during the 2012 edition. Sundance has...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jim Hosking’s An Evening with Beverly Luff
Heavy on the gag....reflex, Jim Hosking's feature break out debut (a 2016 Sundance Park City at Midnight selection) was what could categorically be called...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Eva Vives’ All About Nina
Every year there are the last minute additions getting in under the wire, this might be the case for Eva Vives' directorial debut. Receiving...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Sarah Daggar-Nickson’s A Vigilante
Unless it's within the horror genre, revenge type films signed by female filmmakers are few and far between. For every Kill Bill, there are...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Kenny Riches’ A Name Without a Place
It's not just the Borscht folks who are reinvigorating the American independent scene in the Sunshine State, or more specifically, Miami. Cut to Kenny...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Silas Howard’s A Kid Like Jake
A busy bee as of late directing notable television gigs such as Hudson Valley Ballers and Transparent, Silas Howard premiered his debut film at...
2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Yen Tan’s 1985
The aesthetic foot print of this Malaysian born, Austin-based helmer can be visually catalogued year in and year out on film fest circuit. Part...
The Conversation: Top 10 American Indie Filmmakers Missing in Action (Class of ’17)
Following up our last week’s offering of ten international directors who have been missing in action for the past five years or more, we...
Video: Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – 2017 TIFF Post Screening Q&A
Landing the coveted People's Choice Award, which in some circles is believed to be a god luck blessing towards an eventual Oscar win, Fox...
Lady Bird | Review
Call Her by Her Name: Gerwig Shifts Shrewdly in Director’s Seat
Actress Greta Gerwig, alum of the American film movement known as Mumblecore and ingenious...
Last Flag Flying | Review
Looking Back Instead of Forward: A New Kind of Coming-of-Age Tale for Linklater
Rare is the filmmaker who can entertain with little more than old-fashioned...
Kidnap | Blu-ray Review
Halle Berry continues her unwavering dedication to remaining a B-movie maven with Luis Prieto’s Kidnap, a lean, mean adrenaline pumping slice of 1990s style...
Novitiate | Review
And Then There Were Nun: Betts’ Novel Approach to the Nunnery
Director Maggie Betts revisits a fascinating transitional period in the Catholic church with her...
All About Eva: Mary Elizabeth Winstead & Common Stand Up for Vives’ “All About Nina”
The story writer from one of the seminal American indie films of the naughts (Raising Victor Vargas) has, as confirmed last week, completed photography...
