How A Dog’s Way Home‘s Director Found his Path

Remember Terry the Toad, the adorable nerdy high school kid who had a wild night in American Graffiti? And the government researcher out in the remote, bonding with the wolves out in the Arctic in Never Cry Wolf? Both were played by Charles Martin Smith, now a director who has specialized in films about kids and animals including the two Dolphin Tale movies and the current release,

Serenity Writer/Director Steven Knight on Creating a Twist no one Will See Coming

Writer-director Steven Knight is no stranger to making unconventional films. In the 2013 thriller Locke starring Tom Hardy, the entire plot takes place inside a car. For Serenity, underneath the allegory about a fisherman obsessed over catching an elusive bluefin tuna, lie deeper existential themes.

Knight admits directing can be daunting in a phone call having wrapped Peaky Blinders Season 5. “Every time I do,

How The Favourite‘s Oscar-Nominated Co-Writer Tony McNamara Twisted History

With 10 Oscar-nominations, Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite was matched only by Alfonso Cuaron’s elegiac masterpiece Roma for the largest haul of the year. The films couldn’t be much more different, but then again, every film Lanthimos makes couldn’t be much more different from his peers. The Favourite is nothing like anything the Oscar-nominated Lanthimos has made in the past, either, concerning itself with two rivals, Lady Sarah (Oscar-nominated Rachel Weisz) and Abigail (Oscar-nominated Emma Stone) for the affection and patronage of Queen Anne (Oscar-nominated Olivia Colman) in 18th century England.

Oscar Watch: Writer/Director Nadine Labaki on her Riveting Drama Capernaum

Lebanese writer-director Nadine Labaki took to the streets to make her third feature, Capernaum, which centers on a neglected young boy. Furious with his parents after they sell his barely pubescent sister to an older man, the boy runs away from his ramshackle home. He befriends an Ethiopian refugee and then becomes the caretaker for her baby after the woman is arrested.

Playing a child who shares his own first name,

A Grieving Detective Drives the Action in Film Noir State Like Sleep

Like her brooding State Like Sleep heroine Katherine Grand, filmmaker Meredith Danluck lost a close friend to suicide. Like Katherine, she moved from the United States to Belgium to live with a highly secretive partner. And like Katherine, Danluck rushed to a Brussels hospital after her mother suffered a stroke. Now currently available on Digital, On Demand, and in select theaters, State Like Sleep may draw many of its plot points from Danluck’s adult life but one of its most offbeat sequences comes straight out of a movie she saw at the age of seven.

How Ruth Ginsberg’s Nephew Wrote On the Basis of Sex

Before he experienced the memorial service epiphany that led to On the Basis of Sex, writer Daniel Stiepleman had knocked around for a few years, working in the Peace Corps, teaching high school English and producing TV commercials in Wisconsin. Then, he attended the 2010 funeral of his uncle Martin, the late husband of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. “Martin’s friend gave a eulogy and mentioned in passing that discrimination on the basis of sex was the only case Ruth and Marty ever argued together,”

Writer David Magee on Recreating the Magic in Mary Poppins Returns

The character Mary Poppins has been as well known for a very long time. She was beloved in the pages of P.L. Travers’ eight-volume children series, and then she became something of a global sensation thanks to Disney’s 1964’s Mary Poppins. Julie Andrews made the role an icon, not just for the magical nanny’s ability to effortlessly tidy up, but to do so with her wit, vanity, and compassion ever intact. The film’s early seamless blend of live action and animation,

Filmmakers Bring Personal Stakes to Movies About Teen Addicts

Heroin kills and meth destroys, now more than ever. Hollywood has long dramatized the perils of adult drug addiction in films like Frank Sinatra’s The Man With the Golden Arm, Al Pacino’s breakout The Panic in Needle Park, Gus VanSant’s bleak Drug Store Cowboy, and the gonzo Trainspotting. But in the face of a 10 percent uptick in drug-related suicides in America last year according to a recent study,

Writer/Director Jason Reitman & Screenwriter Jay Carson on Raising Questions in The Front Runner

Three-time Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Jason Reitman makes “discussion” movies  —  movies that prompt questions people talk about after watching.

“I don’t trust any filmmaker that says they have all the answers. I make movies because I have questions,” the writer/director told The Credits at a screening of his new film The Front Runner at the Denver Film Festival.

“All my movies have questions and they leave open-ended because I want the audience to walk out and view the rest of their life through the lens of the movie,” he said.

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,

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,

First Man Writer Josh Singer on how Great Moments Require Sacrifice

Screenwriter Josh Singer didn’t realize it at the time, but great things were just around the corner in 2014 when he and director Damien Chazelle first brainstormed their First Man movie about Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong’s historic 1969 mission to the moon. “It was actually a pretty low point for me,” Singer recalls. “The Fifth Estate, which I wrote, had come out and not done well at all.

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,

Three of Night School’s Writers on Developing the Hilarious Script

Is Night School the next Girls Trip? Like its predecessor, it’s simultaneously goofy and excellent, as well as helmed by Malcolm D. Lee, in which he directed Tiffany Haddish in her breakout role. Here, Haddish co-stars with Kevin Hart, who plays Teddy, a terrible high school student who grows up to be an ace barbecue salesman. All looks reasonably bright for Teddy until he accidentally burns down the store that employs him,