Instant Family Writer/Director Sean Anders Plumbs his Personal Life for Foster Care Film

All films scripts have some degree of personal connection to the writer. But for Sean Anders, the writer-director best known for comedies like Sex Drive (2008),  That’s My Boy (2012) and Daddy’s Home (2015), his latest, Instant Family, mixes heartfelt drama with laughs as it mirrors Anders’s own experiences adopting three kids through the foster care system seven years ago.

Instant Family is about a couple,

Maria by Callas Writer/Director Tom Volf on Revealing the Person Behind the Legend

Maria by Callas writer/director Tom Volf discovered opera only 7 years ago, yet he very quickly found a passion for the fascinating artistic and personal life of Greek-American opera legend Maria Callas. Delving into copious research, he unearthed never-before-seen footage, photographs, recordings, and interviews. The result is a film created entirely from Callas’s own words. It is a fascinating look at art, fame, and the life of a woman of her time. We spoke to Volf about the complications of building a film in that way,

Writer/Director Sandi Tan on the Incredible True Story Behind her Netflix Film Shirkers

Sandi Tan was supposed to be the next big teen sensation—not just in the indie film scene, but in the almost non-existent Singapore film scene of the early 1990s. Tan was just 18 years old when she started making the original version of Shirkers, a beautiful, mysterious film, with the help of her friends Jasmin Ng and Sophie Siddique and her film teacher, Georges Cardona. It would have been a revolutionary addition to the indie canon.

SCAD Savannah Film Fest: Jitters Writer, Director & Star Otoja Abit

Actor Otoja Abit had an idea for a short. It was a simple idea that concealed a depth of feeling; what if we got to see a young man, moments before his wedding ceremony, question whether or not he was making the right choice. Abit, who has acted on TV (The Defenders, The Night Of), film (Stonewall), and in theater in New York, wanted to take what he’d learned and make something himself. 

Writer/Director Peter Hedges on Re-Finding his Voice With Ben is Back

Writer/director Peter Hedges was in attendance at the Middleburg Film Festival to promote and talk about his new film Ben is Back, which stars Julia Roberts and Hedges’ son Lucas, as a mother and her drug-addicted son, who returns from rehab for a 24-hour visit on Christmas Eve. Holly Burns (Roberts) loves her son, even as it is clear he’s having difficulty getting his life back together. Ben seems genuinely committed to sobriety,

Writer Garrard Conely on Watching His Memoir Become Boy Erased

Writer Garrard Conley turned his experience with conversion therapy as a young gay man in Arkansas into his 2016 memoir, Boy Erased. The book was quickly snapped up as a film project with actor Joel Edgerton adapting it for the screen and directing, as well as co-starring in a supporting role.

Conley, who now lives with his husband in New York City, at first was wary about a big screen depiction of his memoir.

Rupert Everett on Writing, Directing & Starring in his Oscar Wilde Biopic The Happy Prince

Fans of both Rupert Everett and literary great Oscar Wilde have been patiently waiting for the release of the new film The Happy Prince, which has been 10 years in the making. The film Everett wrote, directed, and stars in is an unvarnished look at Wilde’s last few years, following his decline after release from a two-year imprisonment for homosexuality. We spoke to Everett about what inspired him as a first-time director,

Writer/Director Felix van Groeningen on Music, Catharsis, and Crafting Beautiful Boy

Known for his critically-acclaimed film Broken Circle Breakdown, which was the Belgian entry for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, writer/director Felix van Groeningen has been courted for years by Hollywood producers to helm his first English language film. He found the perfect project in Beautiful Boy, based on two bestselling memoirs by writers David and Nic Sheff. David’s book, from which the film gets its title, is about his journey dealing with his crystal meth and drug-addicted son Nic.

Elizabeth Chomko on her Bittersweet & Beautiful Directorial Debut What They Had

Writer and first-time director Elizabeth Chomko’s What They Had is a searingly personal film that still manages to make you laugh (a lot, actually) through your tears. The story centers on the irrevocable slide into dementia of Ruth (Blythe Danner) and her family’s attempts—conflicted, confused, and often at odds with one another—to figure out the best way to handle it.

The film opens with Ruth wandering, as if in a daydream,

Ike Barinholtz on his Funny/Terrifying Directorial Debut The Oath

In a future that seems as if it could arrive tomorrow, American citizens are instructed to pledge their loyalty not to their country, but to the president. That’s the premise of The Oath, the first feature directed by Ike Barinholtz. The comic actor, known from such series as madTV and The Mindy Project, also wrote the satire, which begins as a family gathers for Thanksgiving dinner.

Barinholtz plays the host,

Nicole Holofcener on Adapting & Helming The Land of Steady Habits

She doesn’t really rehearse, shoots a limited number of takes and prefers not to watch dailies. While such an approach to filmmaking may seem a bit impractical to some, for writer/director Nicole Holofcener, it defines a decisiveness that has enabled her to produce a body of highly realistic and instantly relatable work.

In her past films — Walking and Talking, Lovely and Amazing, Friends With Money,

White Boy Rick Director Yann Demange on Capturing Detroit’s Decline With Fresh Eyes

Detroit, the most American of cities, home of Ford and Motown, had by 1984 been, in many ways, been abandoned by America. It took an outsider, Paris-born, London raised director Yann Demange, to see this American story with fresh eyes and bring it to the screen in White Boy Rick.

“I didn’t know the history of Detroit. I had just moved to America. I was blown away as I read about the history of the most prosperous city;

TIFF 2018: The Sister Brothers Director & Co-Writer on Their Funny, Soulful Western

When Patrick DeWitt’s novel “The Sisters Brothers” was published in 2011, something new was afoot in its pages. A bloody western set during the gold rush, it had everything you’d expect; gunfights, whiskey, brothels, and ne’er-do-wells of all stripes lusting after the riches buried in the rivers and mountains of California. These genre tropes, expertly handled by DeWitt, were the grimy, gritty package in which he delivered the story’s real gold— the titular Sister brothers and their endless,

Bo Burnham and Elsie Fisher Discuss the Social Media Influences that Shaped Eighth Grade

When writer-director Bo Burnham set out to make Eighth Grade, his acclaimed new account of middle-school anxiety, he had plenty of reasons to be anxious himself. He’d never directed a feature film before, and his subject was a 13-year-old girl, something he’d never been. But any apprehension was balanced by his relief at not being in front of the camera.

“I was very aware of my limitations,” Burnham told The Credits recently while in Washington with his star,

Marina Zenovich on Going Inside Robin Williams’ Mind in Her New HBO Doc

In making Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, premiering July 16 on HBO, director Marina Zenovich celebrates the life and comedic talent of the legendary performer who committed suicide in 2014, using Williams’s voice to tell much of his story as well as interviews with his first wife Valerie Velardi, son Zak Williams and many friends, including Mork & Mindy co-star Pam Dawber, David Letterman, Billy Crystal,

Jennifer Morrison On How Acting Prepared Her for Her Moving Directorial Debut Sun Dogs

Jennifer Morrison has created some of the most lovable characters on film. Dr. Allison Cameron in House, Emma Swan in Once Upon a Time, and Winona Kirk in Star Trek are all strong and captivating women we love to watch on screen. Now, Morrison is shaping compelling new characters from behind the lens in her feature film directorial debut Sun Dogs.

Now on Netflix,

Writer/Director Boots Riley on his Staggeringly Original Sorry to Bother You

Sorry To Bother You is coming to a theater near you, courtesy of Annapurna Pictures, after being one of the most buzzed about films shown at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The directorial debut from Boots Riley, articulate troublemaker and frontman for the band The Coup, has had a bumpy but fascinating road making it to the screen. This satiric, decidedly trippy film is about a young, seemingly malleable telemarketer named Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) and his girlfriend,

How Director Kevin Macdonald Uncovered Bombshell Allegations in his Whitney Houston Doc

Before he shot Whitney, Scottish documentarian Kevin Macdonald did not consider himself a particularly avid Whitney Houston fan. The Oscar-winning director (One Day in September) preferred The Clash back in the day when Houston dominated pop music with her unmatched vocal power. “I was not into that kind of mainstream poppiness,” he says. “At the time you couldn’t avoid her music, but it was kind of unhip to like Whitney Houston.”

Pose Guest director Tina Mabry On the Groundbreaking Show

Though the month of June is Pride month, Hollywood should ideally be celebrating the LGBTQIA experience year-round, in the name of diversity.

Luckily, a new show on FX, Pose, has premiered to great acclaim, and week by week is gathering an appropriately rabid fanbase.  Creator/writers Steven Canals, Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy (Murphy also directs two episodes) have built a story which takes place in 1987,

Writer/Director Ari Aster on his Terrifying Debut Hereditary

When critics bend over backwards to keep a movie’s secrets under wraps, presume that the title in question is a step beyond the norm and well worth seeing. That is the case with Hereditary. Writer-director Ari Aster’s feature debut caused festival goers at Sundance and South by Southwest to squirm, shudder and gasp out loud at what transpires onscreen. Starting on June 8, the public will get to witness this grandly operatic yet exceedingly unsettling horror thriller about a grieving family seemingly beset by sinister forces – if they dare.