Best of 2020: The High Note Director Nisha Ganatra on the Importance of a Diverse Cast & Crew
We put together our annual “Best Of” list with an eye towards the conversations that weren’t just about our particular area of interest—how films and TV shows are made and the people who make them—but delved into broader discussions that were unavoidable in this historic, often heartbreaking year. These conversations include our chat with Laverne Cox about her role in Netflix’s Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen, Lovecraft Country cinematographer Michael Watson on filming during a pandemic,
Madison Hamburg on His One-Of-A-Kind HBO Doc “Murder on Middle Beach”
As the title suggests, Murder on Middle Beach, the four-part HBO documentary, revolves around a tragedy. On March 3, 2010, Barbara Hamburg was found stabbed to death outside her home in Madison, Connecticut, an unassuming beachfront town. An unlikely victim, police were unable to find a suspect. But what makes this unsolved murder story even more compelling is that it is being told by Madison Hamburg, Barbara’s son.
Madison was 18 years old at the time and a film student in college.
Documentarian John Dower on “The Mystery of D.B. Cooper”
In 1971, a Boeing 727 flying out of Portland, Oregon was hijacked by a single middle-aged man, operating under the name Dan Cooper. Clad in black, wearing dark sunglasses, and using a bomb in a briefcase as leverage, Cooper demanded four parachutes but only $200,000, and he let the flight’s passengers go in Seattle, where the cash and parachutes were brought aboard. After demanding the pilots fly to Mexico City, he opened the aircraft’s back door over the woods in Washington State,
Documentarian Nathan Grossman Captures a Teenage Icon in “I Am Greta”
Swedish documentarian Nathan Grossman made a leap of faith in 2018 when he decided to film an unknown 15-year-old with a sign staging a one-person strike outside the Stockholm Parliament in order to bring attention to the global climate crisis.
Over the course of 18 months of filming, Greta Thunberg became an international figure and an icon to an increasingly energized youth movement around the world demanding immediate action to address climate change.
Writer/Director Francis Lee on His Hard Scrabble Love Story “Ammonite”
Writer-director Francis Lee’s acclaimed 2017 debut feature God’s Own Country and his follow-up, Ammonite (Neon), unabashedly center on queer, working-class characters. So it may come as a bit of a surprise that Lee cites 1980s studio movies as among his all-time favorite films.
“In my head, when I’m making my films, I’m making my version of An Officer and a Gentleman or Pretty Woman or Working Girl;
“His House” Writer/Director Remi Weekes on his Gut Punch Feature Debut
Back another lifetime ago, writer/director Remi Weekes‘ His House celebrated its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this past January. Netflix quickly acquired it, and the future was looking bright for the talented filmmaker and his debut feature. You know what happened next.
Yet here we are, months later and living in our nightmarish world, with Weekes’ stunning horror film set to debut on October 30. “I’m excited,” Weekes said from London when I asked him what it felt like to finally see his film released into the wild,
“A New York Christmas Wedding” Writer/Director Otoja Abit on His Debut Feature
When we attended the Savannah Film Festival in 2018, one of the filmmakers we covered was Otoja Abit, an actor who had roles in television series (The Defenders, The Night Of) and film (Stonewall), who was in Savannah to screen his short, Jitters. The 12-minute film centered on Abit’s central character, a man undergoing some last-second concerns in the moments before his wedding.
Co-Director Lisa Cortés on Voting Rights Past & Present in “All In: The Fight for Democracy”
Amazon’s recent documentary about voting rights and voter suppression, All In: The Fight for Democracy, opens to newscast audio from November 6, 2018, covering the Georgia governor’s race between Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp. That election, which would have seen Abrams become the country’s first African-American woman governor had she been elected, became a flashpoint for a nationwide recognizance of contemporary issues surrounding the closure of polling stations, deliberate under-training of poll monitors,
Writer/Director Miranda July on Her Joyously Original Third Feature “Kajillionaire”
Miranda July wears many hats—writer, filmmaker, actress, performance artist, and more. Indeed, her name appears as bylines on magazine articles, as director, writer, and actor in feature-film credits, and as an author on book covers (she has penned an award-winning collection of short stories and published both fiction and nonfiction). Her artistic diversity is perhaps what makes her projects so unique and nuanced and wonderful to engage with.
July’s breakthrough on the big screen came with the 2005 release of Me and You and Everyone We Know,
Aaron Sorkin on Writing & Directing his Timely “The Trial of the Chicago 7”
When writer/director Aaron Sorkin started writing The Trial of the Chicago 7 over 12 years ago, he had no way of knowing how his script based on a real-life conspiracy trial for men accused of inciting riots during the 1968 Democratic Convention would parallel current events in 2020. Now, his film is set to premiere on October 16th on Netflix, only weeks before the most important election of our time.
Director Angel Manuel Soto on His High-Octane HBO Max Feature “Charm City Kings”
In some ways, it’s a story that director Angel Manuel Soto knows little about. But it’s also one he knows only too well. Centered around the urban dirt bike culture in Baltimore, Maryland, Charm City Kings, making its debut on HBO Max, is a raw, coming-of-age drama based in a culture where respect is earned through stunt riding.
Take the bikes out of the equation, and it is remarkably similar to how Soto felt growing up in Puerto Rico.
“The Boys in The Band” Director Joe Mantello on Adapting Broadway’s Groundbreaking Play
Mart Crowley’s 1968 play The Boys in the Band is an undisputed milestone in gay history. Produced a year before the Stonewall rebellion, this story of an Upper East Side birthday gathering was groundbreaking, with gay men overtly representing themselves onstage, and asked to be seen as themselves, nothing more or less. This was a first. It was also a massive hit. For its 50th anniversary, producer Ryan Murphy revived the play on Broadway,
Director Julie Taymor on The Many Perspectives of Her Gloria Steinem Biopic “The Glorias”
Director Julie Taymor’s latest feature, The Glorias, celebrates the life of a living icon of our time, Gloria Steinem, but she tells Gloria’s story in her utterly singular way. The director uses four different actresses to represent the famed women’s rights activist at different times in her life. There are imaginative, surreal sequences that express Gloria’s inner dialogue. There’s a sort of metaphysical bus, which carries Gloria through her journey, sometimes accompanied by her older or younger selves (played in the film by Ryan Kiera Armstrong,
“Lovecraft Country” Director Cheryl Dunye on Shapeshifting & More in Episode 5
HBO’s Lovecraft Country, created by Executive Producer Misha Green, is being celebrated by viewers and critics alike. The story of two families that come together in the Jim Crow South to battle monsters and white racists in power has horrors both real and imagined, but there are many elements in the storytelling and many challenges to the characters that speak to the state of American race relations today. The misadventures of Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors),
Director Antonio Campos Explores Fanaticism and Faith in “The Devil All The Time”
Complicated characters are director/writer/producer Antonio Campos’ forte. There was the desensitized, internet-addicted prep-school student in his feature-length debut, Afterschool; the shockingly tragic television reporter in Christine; and the inexplicably violent young mother in the first season of The Sinner (Campos directed the pilot and served as that season’s executive producer).
Now, in his latest project, The Devil All the Time — streaming on Netflix starting Sept.
Director Dime Davis on Making Emmy History With “A Black Lady Sketch Show”
Last year, director Dime Davis visited California desert retreat Joshua Tree to take a break from her burgeoning career as director of Showtime drama The Chi and BET rom-com Boomerang. “I’d been trying to get my head together so I wasn’t getting back to people,” Davis recalls. But Robin Thede kept calling. The comedian had created a new sketch series for HBO and wanted Davis to direct the whole thing.
“Boys State” Directors Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss on Their Timely Doc
The documentary Boys State (now streaming on Apple TV+) follows four teenagers navigating a week-long annual program in which a thousand high school seniors in Texas create their own mock government. Winner of the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, the film is like a riveting mix of a soap opera, Lord of the Flies, and Breaking Away. The Credits spoke to directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss about the making of Boys State,
“An American Pickle” Director Brandon Trost Tackles Two Seth Rogens
In many ways, An American Pickle is unlike any comedy Seth Rogen has done before. And that’s one reason Brandon Trost, a cinematographer who has worked extensively with Rogen, including on such films as This is the End, Neighbors, The Interview and The Disaster Artist, chose it for his directorial debut.
For starters, the HBO Max original (premiering on August 6) offers one of the year’s more unusual plotlines.
How Justin Simien Schools Viewers in “Dear White People”
On one hand, Dear White People creator Justin Simien was thrilled to see a 600 percent increase in viewership for his Netflix series in the wake of George Floyd’s death. On the other hand, he says, “It’s also a little bit annoying because like, ‘Where were y’all when we started this conversation with this franchise six years ago when this [racism] was just as relevant then as it is now?'”
In tracking the trials and tribulations of wise-cracking Black students at an Ivy League-level fictional school called Winchester University,
Rethinking Old Age in Sergio Navarretta’s “The Cuban”
The Cuban, director Sergio Navarretta’s (Arctic Dogs) new feature out on streaming and in theaters on July 31st, melds two missives into one sweetly heartfelt film: a tribute to Afro-Cuban jazz and a reminder to cherish our elders. Opening in the cold light of a Canadian nursing home, brisk nurses attend to Luis Garcia (Oscar-winner Louis Gossett Jr.), the film’s titular star. Luis, a former jazz musician, is gripped by dementia and Alzheimer’s,
