Oscar-Nominee Martin McDonagh on his Dark, Brilliant Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees, as well as publishing new interviews with those vying for Oscar gold this Sunday. Writer/director Martin McDonagh is nominated in the Best Picture and Writing (Original Sreenplay) category. The full list of the nominees can be found here.

Oscar-Nominee Greta Gerwig On Moving Behind the Camera for her Solo Directorial Debut Lady Bird

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees, as well as publishing new interviews with those vying for Oscar gold this Sunday. Greta Gerwig is nominated in two categories; Directing and Writing (Original Screenplay) for her work on Lady Bird. She joins Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk), Jordan Peele (Get Out), Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread) and Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) in the Directing category. 

Oscar-Nominated Director Luca Guadagnino on his Lush, Lyrical Call Me By Your Name

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees. Luca Guadagnino is nominated in the Best Picture category, alongside his producers Peter Spears, Emilie Georges and Marco Morabito. The other Best Picture nominees are Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. 

Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s lush and luscious love story Call Me By Your Name is an homage to the director’s love for cinema.

Talking to Oscar-Nominee Gary Oldman & Director Joe Wright About Darkest Hour—Part II

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees. Gary Oldman is nominated for Actor in a Leading Role, alongside Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq), Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread) and Timothée Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name). 

In Part 2 of an interview with Darkest Hour director Joe Wright and star Gary Oldman, who has been receiving glowing reviews for his portrait of Winston Churchill in the film that opens November 22,

Talking to Oscar-Nominee Gary Oldman & Director Joe Wright About Darkest Hour—Part I

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees. Gary Oldman is nominated for Actor in a Leading Role, alongside Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq), Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread) and Timothée Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name). 

In a film career that spans four decades,

How Writer-Director James Mangold Snagged Historic Oscar Nom for R-Rated Logan Script

Logan made Oscar history this year as the first comic book-based screenplay nominated for an Academy Award. The distinction’s due in no small part to director/co-writer James Mangold‘s extreme aversion to superhero clichés, which he wearily recites from his office on the 20th Century Fox lot in Los Angeles. “Some new alien arrives with a new power that somehow challenges our heroes; our heroes are fractured among each other so they have to learn how to band together or get over whatever romantic scars they have between them to focus on the fight ahead of them;

Oscar-Nominated Heroin(e) Director on Documenting the National Opioid Crisis

Director Elaine McMillion Sheldon is a native of West Virginia and saw the consequences of opioid addiction in her own community.

In her short documentary Heroin(e), which is now streaming on Netflix, she takes a closer look at the crisis while focusing on three female leaders who are making a difference on the ground.

The feature is set in Huntington, West Virginia. In the movie’s opening moments, the film notes that Huntington “has been called the overdose capital of America” and “its overdose death rate is 10 times the national average.”

Instead of focusing on the community’s pain,

Oscar-Nominated Doc Maker Steve James on his Gripping Immigrant’s Story Abacus: Small Enough to Jail

Chicago filmmaker Steve James has a fraught history with the Oscars dating back to 1994, when his critically acclaimed box office hit Hoop Dreams failed to get nominated for an Academy Award. The snub outraged late movie critic Roger Ebert, prompted an Entertainment Weekly expose and inspired changes in Academy voting procedures. Cut to 2011, when James made The Interrupters, a gritty group portrait of reformed gang members fighting to stop murders on the streets of Chicago.

Writer/Director Ziad Doueiri on Earning Lebanon’s First Ever Oscar-Nomination With His Film The Insult

When writer/director Ziad Doueiri got word that his film The Insult earned an Oscar nomination in the foreign language category, the first time that a movie from Lebanon was recognized with that honor, he felt joy.

“It is a beautiful present for a tiny country that’s never been to the Oscars. It’s like Jamaica winning the bobsled at the Olympics, remember?” says Doueiri, who is now an American citizen living in Paris.

The Breadwinner‘s Oscar-Nominated Director on Her Animated Film About a Girl Who Outsmarts the Taliban

When Irish director Nora Twomey auditions actors for her animated movies, she does not look at them. She listens. And when 10-year old Saara Chaudry tried out for the starring role in The Breadwinner, Twomey liked what she heard. “I put up drawings on the wall and look at the pictures of the characters to see if they match what I’m listening to,” says Twomey. “Saara had so much range and depth I immediately felt ‘This is Parvana.'”

Damon Cardasis on Bringing Authenticity to His Coming-of-Age LGBTQ Musical Drama Saturday Church

From interning for a casting director in Los Angeles, to working with producer Scott Rudin back in his native New York, to serving as an on-set assistant and post supervisor for and later as a co-producer with producer/director/writer Rebecca Miller, Damon Cardasis has experienced the in and outs of the filmmaking business. He is perhaps best known for producing Maggie’s Plan, starring Greta Gerwig and Ethan Hawke, through the production company he formed and still operates with Miller called Round Films — until now that is.

Talking Frank Capra and Marmalade Addiction with Paddington 2 Director Paul King

Paul King, the director behind Paddington 2 is 100% lovely. Fitting for a gent who created a film with 100% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, right?

For the sequel to 2015’s hit Paddington, King collaborated with writer Simon Farnaby on the script and reunited the core cast of Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins and Ben Whishaw. This go around, he adds Hugh Grant to the mix,

Actress Daniela Vega & Writer/Director Sebastian Lelio on Their Oscar-Nominated Film A Fantastic Woman

Chile-bred, Berlin-based director Sebastian Lelio has become an international filmmaker who moves between styles and countries. He’s also exceptionally prolific, with not one but three movies awaiting release. First up is A Fantastic Woman, one of this year’s five foreign-film Oscar contenders, which will be released today, Feb. 2, in the U.S. It’s the tale of a transgender woman, played by Daniela Vega, who fights for her right to grieve her older lover after his sudden death.

Writers/Directors The Spierig Brothers on Their Deliciously Detailed Horror Winchester

What makes an enduring haunted house classic? Much can be said for dread-inducing camera work, eerie sound design or clever ghostly effects, but for the Spierig brothers, it’s the human story underneath that can transform a horror flick from simply scary to downright legendary. Enter Winchester, a dramatization of the curious true-life mystery of Sarah Winchester and her fascinating, illogical home known as the Winchester Mystery House. And while the details of the true story are sketchy at best,

Inside how The Final Year Looks Back on President Obama’s Swan Song

There once was a time, not long ago, when the sum of US foreign policy goals couldn’t be distilled to an acronym that fit on a hat. Simply stating such a thing might inspire yearning for eighteen months past — or stoke the fires of long-burning vitriol. The Final Year, director Greg Barker’s evenhanded front-row look at a swath of the last Presidential administration’s policies being enacted, or at least striven for,

Director Paul McGuigan on Nabbing the Perfect Actress to Play Gloria Grahame in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool

Scottish director Paul McGuigan, whose credits include Lucky Number Slevin and Victor Frankenstein, says he tries not to watch his own films too often “because you start to go nuts.” But his latest, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, was different.  “I’ve watched it more than any of them because I still find it moving myself, the pairing of Annette [Bening] and Jamie [Bell]. I find it moving and touching because they were real people.”

Those real people are Hollywood icon Gloria Grahame (Bening) who starred in numerous films in the 40s and 50s and won an Oscar in 1952 for The Bad and the Beautiful and Peter Turner,

Sundance 2018: A Conversation with the Director and Cast of Daring Heist Film American Animals

Whether it’s the reluctant exploitation of a super skill in Baby Driver or the stylish and sophisticated execution of Ocean’s Eleven, heist movies are an American cinematic staple. The masterminded plans, daring escapes, and thrilling shootouts look easy on screen, but what would happen in a real life do-it-yourself caper? Enter Sundance selection, American Animals.

In 2004, Warren Lipka, Spencer Reinhard, Chas Allen, and Eric Borsuk fell headlong into a reckless amateur effort to break out of the mundanity of their lives.

Sundance 2018: Writer/Director Babis Makridis on Exploring an Addiction to Sadness in his Surprisingly Funny Pity

Chatting with Greek filmmaker Babis Makridis is a little like being in one of his films. He’s dry, soft spoken, casually funny, and very smart. In his latest film, Pity, about a man who can only experience happiness by being unhappy, Makridis has delivered that rare treat—a story that doesn’t flinch at life’s paradoxes, absurdities and miseries, yet still manages to get a theater full of people laughing. No small feat there.

Makridis has the distinction of having his last feature, 

Trudie Styler on Directing Her First Feature Film Freak Show About a Cross-Dressing Teenager

Trudie Styler is an actress, a documentarian, a producer and, now, a feature film director. Her debut, Freak Show, tells the story of gender-bending, cross-dressing teenager Billy Bloom, who must navigate the unwelcoming waters of his new ultra-conservative high school. Determined to stay true to himself, despite the belles and bullies who taunt him, he decides to challenge the status quo by running for homecoming queen. Alex Lawther (The Imitation Game,

Sundance 2018: This Close Director on Shoshannah Stern & Josh Feldman’s Groundbreaking Series, the First by two Deaf Creators

Director Andrew Ahn made at splash at Sundance in 2016 with his feature Spa Night, which focused on a closeted Korean-American teenager who takes a job at a Korean spa to help his struggling family, and ends up discovering a underground world of gay sex that terrifies and thrills him. Ahn was back at Sundance this year for another intriguing project, This Close, a groundbreaking new series on Sundance Now created by Josh Feldman and Shoshannah Stern,