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Watch: Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or Acceptance Speech for Anora
Anora
American independent filmmaker Sean Baker was, for us at Filmmaker, the thrilling winner of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or for his forthcoming NEON release, Anora, a comedy about a sex worker, played by Mickey Madison, and her relationship with a Russian oligarch's son. “This literally has been my singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years," Baker said on accepting the award from the Greta Gerwig-led jury, "so I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. But I do know that I will continue to fight for cinema because right now as filmmakers, we have to fight to keep cinema alive. This means making feature films intended for theatrical exhibition.” He… Read more
“In Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, the Women are Voicing Out Their Deepest Feelings and Thoughts, But Here in Sauna Day the Focus is On the Unsaid”: Anna Hints and Tushar Prakash on their Cannes-Debuting short Sauna Day
Sauna Day
When I last interviewed Estonian filmmaker Anna Hints it was to discuss her Sundance 2023-premiering Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, which would go on to win the World Cinema Documentary Competition Directing Award. (It also nabbed Best Documentary at the 36th European Film Awards on its way to becoming Estonia’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars.) The film offers quite a unique peek into a UNESCO-designated tradition that for centuries has allowed women like those the director (and contemporary artist and experimental folk musician) respectfully lenses to bond, heal and reveal in a safe space of smoke and sweat. And now Hints’s painstakingly crafted short Sauna Day, co-directed with her “partner in life and art,” Indian filmmaker Tushar Prakash (who also served… Read more
Cannes 2024: Oh, Canada and The Shrouds
Richard Gere in Oh, Canada
For decades, Paul Schrader’s taste in cinema has been widely known, particularly the Bressonian proclivities he’s repeatedly worked over—and, especially since becoming a Facebook poster, he’s provided an open invitation to make his problems ours as well. Watching Oh, Canada knowing of his recent health scares, my guess was that the topical draw of Russell Banks's source novel Foregone was death; indeed, after several hospitalizations for long COVID, Schrader told himself, “If I’m going to make a film about death, I’d better hurry up.” Thus Oh, Canada, which reteams Schrader with his American Gigolo star Richard Gere (the writer-director jokes that this time they’re offering up “Dying gigolo”). This isn’t another one of Schrader’s “Man in a Room” films, at… Read more
“Because I HAVE TO Do It, I Do”: Nell Tiger Free, Back To One, Episode 292
She was on Game of Thrones when she was a child, but Nell Tiger Free hit her stride in the M. Night Shyamalan series Servant, and now her absolutely incredible performance in the hit horror film The First Omen has solidified her as one of the great young actors working today. On this episode, she discusses her "total non-process" process, which means every aspect of her work takes place between “action” and “cut” and literally nowhere else. She talks about why she only reads the script once, finds all backstory that isn’t on the page “cringe,” doesn’t like to rehearse at all, is at the complete service of the director, and strives for total immersion in the moment. It’s a… Read more
Renny Harlin on The Strangers: Chapter 1, China and Don Siegel
Froy Gutierrez, Madelaine Petsch and Renny Harlin on the set of The Strangers - Chapter 1
Renny Harlin is closing in on 40 years in the movie business and still committed to his craft. He has worked all over the world on films at the top and bottom of the box office charts, but still gets a twinkle in his eye when discussing how a score can tweak the tension of a scene. He dreamed of being a Hollywood action movie director since childhood, and is best known for his bombastic 1990s blockbusters like Die Hard 2 (1990) and Cliffhanger (1993). But after Hollywood ejected him for younger models, he maintained a furious productivity elsewhere, working in China, United Arab Emirates, Bulgaria and Greece, with aging compatriots including Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan and Aaron Eckhart. Now he… Read more
“Obviously, We Couldn’t Get Three Sandworms for That Day”: DP Greig Fraser on Dune: Part Two
Denis Villeneuve and Greig Fraser on the set of Dune: Part Two (Photo by Niko Tavernise)
Dune: Part Two picks up directly following the events of its predecessor, with young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) taken in by the Fremen after being marooned in the desert of Arrakis. However, cinematographer Greig Fraser was not content to merely continue where he left off. After winning an Oscar for the first film, Fraser shuffled his tool bag by adding the Alexa 65, an assortment of colorful new glass and an infrared sequence set in a gladiator arena on Giedi Prime. It’s not surprising considering Fraser’s history of experimentation, which includes pioneering virtual production work on The Mandalorian and reintroducing film back into the pipeline in a new way on the first Dune with a film out/scan back process. With Dune: Part… Read more
“I Don’t Want the Audience to Remember My Film as Just Another Film Banned in Vietnam”: Trương Minh Quý ơn His Cannes-Premiering Viêt and Nam
Viêt and Nam
Set shortly before 9/11, Trương Minh Quý’s Viêt and Nam begins underground with two coal miners, their bodies soaked in sweat and caked in dirt. As they wait for instructions, they talk about a dream — one concerning water, plastic bags, and drowning. In the silence, they comfort each other by caressing each other’s faces. Suddenly, a bell rings. They rebutton their clothes. Moments later, a bomb can be heard exploding in the distance. Only above ground do the details surface: Viêt and Nam are lovers who are on the brink of separation as Nam, influenced by Vietnam’s migrant boom of the late 1990s to early 2000s, prepares to leave his home country for greener pastures abroad. But before his departure,… Read more
“I Actually Feel Like the Firefly Was Caught in the Jar”: Tyler Taormina on His Cannes-Premiering Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
Christmas Eve in Miller's Point
Whether the sprawling fantasia that is Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point proves heartwarmingly reflective or personally destabilizing in its near-ethnographic study of American holiday ritual will depend, largely, on the composition and size of your own Xmas memories. It’s a strength of the film, however, that Taormina’s expansive canvas allows for — and incorporates — the whole range of emotions that the theater of Christmas can produce, from the giddiness of an overstimulated child, stomach groaning from too much pumpkin pie, gazing at all those wrapped presents, to the wearied anxiety of an adult realizing that the holiday has only put a brief pause on family troubles. And what’s particularly remarkable about Taormina’s picture is that it produces… Read more
Cannes 2024: Furiosa, Bird, Kinds of Kindness, Universal Language
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
The deficiencies of George Miller’s Fury Road prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga—many of which have, unsurprisingly, been given a pass—echo my broader sentiments towards this year’s Cannes, at least from where we sit just past the halfway point. In Furiosa’s opening minutes, we’re informed via voiceover of the great struggles facing its world: pandemics, famine, climate catastrophe. Offering a supplementary narrative of broader relevance, it’s a table setting of topicality that’s wholly unnecessary to the film’s primary, surface pleasures. Many of this year’s Palme d’Or contenders, too, have felt like showcases for Contemporary Issue X rather than works of cinema. “How can we brave the world’s cruelties?” Furiosa asks, and Cannes would have you believe that the answer is,… Read more
