Inherent Risk: Editor and Producer Mathilde Bonnefoy on Making Citizenfour

When documentarian Laura Poitras asked Edward Snowden why he had chosen her, out of all the potential people to disclose his information to, he replied, “I didn’t. You chose yourself.” At the time Snowden was writing to her as “citizen four,” and for months Poitras alone knew about his trove of information on the N.S.A.'s surveillance program.

Eventually, as we learn in Citizenfour, the Oscar-nominated documentary that culminated from her relationship with Snowden,

Berlinale 2015: Christian Bale & Natalie Portman Discuss Knight of Cups

Watching Terence Malick’s Knight of Cups, set in a glowing, static Los Angeles, was reminiscent of the summation of my father’s arguments against me going to college there — there’s just no there, there. Rick (Christian Bale), a peaking screenwriter, wondering how he arrived exactly where he wanted to be, wanders the city and the nearby desert, passing through condos and mansions and decadent fêtes. This metaphorical prince — he is such because the narration at the beginning of the movie tells us so —

Berlinale 2015: A Q&A With The Filmmakers & Star of Koza

A bleak, beautiful entry from Slovakia in the year’s Berlinale, Koza starts off slow and static and stays that way, even as worlds heap themselves on the titular main character. An uncommon blend of reality and fiction, the film stars the real life Koza, birth name Peter Baláž, more or less as himself. The Roma boxer competed in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games for Slovakia, returned home, and over the ensuing years, slipped back into the chronic poverty that’s typical of what many Roma face across Europe.

Berlinale 2015: Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert

Werner Herzog’s portrait of Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman), the early 20th century British adventurer who was instrumental in creating the boundaries of much of the modern Middle East in Queen of the Desert , omits her real-life role as a clandestine intelligence agent for the British Empire to explore her interior life, as Herzog put it. In Herzog’s version of events, Kidman’s luminous, head-scarf wearing Bell swears up and down to trusting sheiks that she is not a spy —

Berlinale 2015: Jack Pettibone Riccobono’s Phenomenal The Seventh Fire

The first time the director Jack Pettibone Riccobono filmed the Ojibwe tribe at northern Minnesota’s White Earth Indian Reservation, it was to document the tribe’s efforts to preserve their local wild rice, considered sacred for centuries. Riccobono returned to the reservation in 2010 to show the short documentary about their efforts, The Sacred Food, but also to find someone to talk to him about a different, quietly growing problem at the reservation.

VFX Supervisor Dan Glass on the Vast World Of Jupiter Ascending

When Andy and Lana Wachowski release a picture, moviegoers can rely on it to be a visual experience. In large part, that is because of the talent of their visual effects team, which has been supervised since The Matrix Reloaded by Dan Glass. Glass, who has worked with the Wachowskis on two Matrix films, Speed Racer, and Cloud Atlas, is also credited as the visual effects supervisor for Jupiter Ascending,

Made in Maryland: Hanging With the Crew on the Set of Veep

It was a cold, blustery Tuesday in December when we were on the set of HBO’s Veep in downtown Baltimore. On the production front, however, It was a relatively calm day of filming by Veep standards, but a calm day on the set of this show still requires dozens of crew members to work their butts off. Whether it was Kim Bogues in craft services, costumer Constance Harris or assistant property managers Jamie Bishop and John Bert,

Berlinale 2015: Isabel Coixet’s Nobody Wants the Night

The 65th Berlinale opening film is a female-led, stressful adventure movie, set around a snowy, ill-fated journey loosely based on the memoirs of Josephine Peary, wife to Robert Peary, who aggressively, inaccurately claimed to be the first man to reach the North Pole in 1909. Director Isabel Coixet’s Nadie Quiere La Noche/Nobody Wants the Night is a tribute to Josephine’s singleminded journey through godforsaken northern hinterlands to be as close as possible to her husband as he (thinks he) achieves his incredible goal.

Selma Editor Spencer Averick on the Film’s Toughest Scenes to Cut

Troopers storm into a café. They're looking for the old man, his daughter and his grandson that they'd been chasing after breaking up a night march in Selma. The old man, Cager Lee (played by the phenomenal Henry Sanders), his daughter Viola (Charity Jordan) and his grandson Jimmie Lee Jackson (Keith Stanfield) are trying to hide their faces behind menus at a table in the back. The troopers spot them and throw the 82-year old Cager Lee to the ground,

American Sniper‘s Ben Reed on Researching his Role

American Sniper is based on the book by the late Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in American military history, serving four tours of duty in Iraq. The film has sparked heated debate, Twitter-feuds, and thoughtful analysis from some of the industry's best film critics, from Slate's Dana Stevens to the New Yorker's David Denby, arguing for the film's artistic merits as well as the nuances in its message,

A Q&A With Writer, Director & Actress Desiree Akhavan, New Girls Cast Member

Since her feature film debut, Appropriate Behavior, premiered at Sundance in 2014, Desiree Akhavan — the film's 30-year-old writer, director, and star — has been garnering buzz as the "Next Lena Dunham." It's a click-bait headline that grabs eyeballs, for sure, but it's also a lazy person's way of saying that she's an intelligent, funny, moral and sexual boundary-pushing, talented filmmaker who also happens to be a young woman who writes, directs and stars in her own stuff.

Making History: Selma Casting Director Aisha Coley

By now we all know that actor David Oyelowo didn’t get nominated for his utterly captivating performance as Martin Luther King Jr. in Ava DuVernay’s Selma. Nor did DuVernay get the nod for director. The film, however, was nominated for Best Picture, and there’s zero doubt that Oyelowo and DuVernay could and likely should have been nominated. Yet neither one of them, nor any of the members of the cast or crew, worked on this film for the awards.

Slamdance 2015: Gabrielle Demeestere on Adapting James Franco’s Yosemite

Last night Slamdance Film Festival’s closing night selection was Yosemite, adapted and directed by Gabrielle Demeestere from three of James Franco’s short stories, earning her a female directing grant from the festival for her fantastic first effort. Yosemite is structured as a triptych, following the thread of three 5th graders, Chris, Joe and Ted, who all live in Palo Alto, a picturesque Californian suburb that Demeestere infuses with dread. In the opening section,

Project Almanac Shoots Found Footage With Cinematographer Matthew Lloyd

As director Dean Israelite spun Matthew Lloyd a tale about kids creating a time machine, showing him detailed storyboard panels with picture of teens with a secret tools that looks liked a dark graphic novel, Lloyd made a decision. He would be the cinematographer for the Paramount feature Project Almanac.

The next challenge was figure out how to make the film’s found footage style work. The duo decided to split the difference,

Julianne Moore, Co-Director Wash Westmoreland & Cast Discuss Still Alice

In Still Alice, Julianne Moore plays a linguistics professor who is shockingly diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's disease. With her family (husband Alec Baldwin and grown children Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish) by her side, she tries to deal with the debilitating and horrifying disease — saying at one point that she even wished she had cancer instead. Based on the novel by Lisa Genova, Alice has won critical praise,

Sundance 2015: The Horizon Award Reception for 20-year-old Verónica Ortiz-Calderón

Park City, Utah – Twenty-year-old Syracuse University Student Verónica Ortiz-Calderón was awarded the inaugural Horizon Award last night for her short film Y Ya No Te Gustas (And You Don’t Like Yourself Anymore), at a reception held at Sundance House.

Ortiz-Calderón’s thoughtful, arresting debut, which was selected from more than 400 submissions from up-and-coming female filmmakers, premiered to a room full of film industry heavyweights. Accepting the award, and a $10,000 scholarship check from Sharon Waxman,

Sundance 2015: Talking to Cassian Elwes, Co-Producer of Inaugural Horizon Awards

The Sundance Film Festival has made a few recent announcements that speak to a fresh commitment to help spread some of the festival’s opportunities around. The first was a new tool to help lesser-known filmmakers get their work seen by using a new service, Quiver Digital. As reported by Mashable, Quiver Digital is a distribution dashboard that allows users to push their films to Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, Google Play and Sony Entertainment Network,

Legendary Casting Director Bonnie Timmerman On Blackhat & More

To say that Casting Director Bonnie Timmermann’s influence on the movie business over the last 40 years has been enormous is no understatement. George Clooney, Alec Baldwin, Ben Stiller, Sandra Bullock, Reese Witherspoon, Diane Lane, Jennifer Connelly, Jessica Alba, Jim Carrey, and Halle Berry are just a few of the now superstar actors discovered by Timmermann as they were starting their careers. Responsible for casting the likes of Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Christopher Walken in early theater roles in the 1970s at NYC’s Phoenix Repertory Company,

7 Great Filmmakers On Their Craft

This week we’ve been sharing Movies OnDemand’s video interviews with some of this year’s Oscar nominees on their craft. In parts I, II and III, we've heard what artists such as Alejandro G. Iñárritu, J.K. Simmons, Felicity Jones, Keira Knightley, Ethan Hawke, Edward Norton, and Bennett Miller have had to say about their craft.

It’s the case every single year, however, that films and filmmakers get left off the nominee list that could have easily been selected.

Oscar Nominees Discuss Their Preparation – Part III

We’ve heard from nominees like directors Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Bennett Miller and actors Felicity Jones and J.K. Simmons, all discussing their preparation for tackling their subjects. Movies OnDemand put together these fantastic (and very brief) video interviews not just with the nominees, but with many of the serious contenders this year, including director Jon Stewart (Rosewater), composer Atticus Ross (Gone Girl) and actress Katherine Waterson (Inherent Vice).