Game Changer: “Squid Game” Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk on his Audacious Ambitions for Seasons 2 & 3

Squid Game is a provocative experiment not only in strategy and skill, but also in the addictive pursuit of risking it all – even death – for a big win. Ironically, the show’s episodes are equally addictive, and fans demanded more after the innovative first season. Series creator, writer, and director Hwang Dong-hyuk didn’t intend to return to the intense filming schedule, but demand drove him to continue the captivating competition.

By Kelle Long  |  April 21, 2025
Dawn of a New DC: Go Behind-the-Scenes of James Gunn’s “Superman”

Did you notice something in the sky on April 18? It wasn’t a bird or a plane, it was, of course, Superman, officially soaring for DC Studios to celebrate his special day. April 18 is Superman Day, in case you were unaware, and to that end, DC Studios gave us a sneak-peak behind-the-scenes of James Gunn’s upcoming Superman, the first feature film to fly out of the gate for the newly unified DC Studios,

By The Credits  |  April 21, 2025
Ryan Coogler Does it Again: The Auteur’s Ambitious Epic “Sinners” Wins Box Office Crown

There was a reason why studios were competing to land Ryan Coogler’s ambitious new film, Sinnerswhen the writer-director and his star, Michael B. Jordan, were shopping the script in Hollywood. Coogler’s earned the respect of audiences across the world, having put out four excellent films in precisely four attempts, beginning with his 2013 breakout film Fruitvale Station and carrying through his subsequent three films,

By The Credits  |  April 21, 2025
Along With “The Amateur,” Sate Your Spy Appetite With These 6 Can’t-Miss Classics

In the wake of the release of director James Hawes’ The Amateur, starring Rami Malek as a CIA decoder who sets out to avenge his wife’s murder despite reluctance from his CIA superiors, now is the perfect time to revisit the genre’s rich history. From breathtaking sets to complex narratives complete with moral dilemmas and characters emblematic of the struggle between good and evil, the spy genre has everything a viewer could want.

By Evelyn Lott  |  April 18, 2025

Interview

Producer

From Script to Scream: Stephanie Allain on Producing Blumhouse’s Latest Nightmare, “The Woman in the Yard”

Stephanie Allain is a trailblazing producer. She was the Senior Vice President of Production at Columbia Pictures, where she oversaw films such as Boyz N The Hood and Desperado. From there, she became the President of Henson Pictures and eventually launched her production company, Homegrown Films. Homegrown Films is behind Hustle & FlowBeyond the Lights, and Exhibiting Forgiveness, a film Allain is deeply proud of.

By Jack Giroux  |  April 17, 2025

Interview

Showrunner

Devil Went Down to Georgia: How Erik Oleson Crafted Kevin Bacon’s Undead Demon Hunter in “The Bondsman”

Writer/producer Erik Oleson definitely knows a thing or two about characters chasing personal demons. He was the head writer on The Man in the High Castle, and went on to be showrunner and executive producer for seasons of both Marvel’s Daredevil and Amazon’s Carnival Row. It makes perfect sense, then, for him to take on Amazon’s new horror-comedy series The Bondsman

In it,

By Leslie Combemale  |  April 17, 2025

Interview

Director

Unreliable Narrators: Liz Garbus on Directing Hulu’s Chilling Adoption Mystery “Good American Family”

Good American Family rolled into living rooms last month like a TV Trojan Horse, appearing at first to be a domestic drama peppered with garden-variety stress. Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo plays super-mom Kristine Barnett, acclaimed author of “The Spark,” about her autistic son who gained early admission to Princeton University thanks to her nurturing ways and the loving support of husband Michael (Mark Duplass). Everything changes when the Indiana couple adopts Ukrainian orphan Natalia Grace,

By Hugh Hart  |  April 16, 2025

Interview

Cinematographer

“Daredevil: Born Again” DPs Hillary Fyfe Spera & Pedro Gómez Millán on Lensing NYC’s Mean Streets

Daredevil built a fierce fandom when the show first appeared in 2015, introducing Charlie Cox as visually impaired lawyer Matt Murdock, whose alter ego roamed the streets of New York at night as Daredevil, a superhero with heightened senses and lethally honed fighting skills. After nearly a decade, Cox reprises his role in Daredevil: Born Again, and in the first of two already planned seasons, doesn’t disappoint. 

With the tagline,

By Leslie Combemale  |  April 16, 2025

Interview

Director Stunt Coordinator/Stunt Person

“Daredevil: Born Again’s” Stunt Coordinator & Second Unit Director Philip Silvera on Big City Brawling

At the beginning of Season 1 of the Disney+ revival of the Daredevil storyline, Daredevil: Born Again, Marvel vigilante Matt Murdock/Daredevil is operating more or less as a yuppie. Matt has hung up his superhero suit to keep his heroics to the courthouse, working as a defense attorney and taking on clients pro bono when he believes in their innocence, but they can’t afford him. But with the murder of his friend and colleague,

By Susannah Edelbaum  |  April 15, 2025

Interview

Production Designer

The Architecture of Espionage: Maria Djurkovic on Designing Rami Malek’s Revenge in “The Amateur”

Bohemian Rhapsody Oscar winner Rami Malik switches it up in The Amateur to play buttoned-down CIA analyst-turned-warrior Charlie Heller, who goes rogue in Europe to hunt down the terrorists responsible for the murder of his wife (Rachel Brosnahan). Tough-as-nails CIA handler (Laurence Fishburne) spearheads the Agency’s efforts to squash Charlie’s self-appointed mission, but he soon learns he’s dealing with a determined, lethally intelligent, and remarkably savvy operator who isn’t above blackmailing his own agency to get the revenge he seeks.

By Hugh Hart  |  April 15, 2025
SXSW 2025: Dan Farah’s “The Age of Disclosure” Stuns Crowd With Shocking Alien Doc

Festival crowds are notoriously exuberant—it can be hard to get a real read on a film’s potential for broader success or acclaim even if the first time it plays for a crowd at a film festival results in cheers and guffaws. Yet sometimes, for some films, a festival crowd’s excitement is as precise an indicator for a film’s impact as you need. This was the case here in Austin this past Sunday, when director Dan Farah showcased his doc The Age of Disclosure for the first time ever to a crowd.

By The Credits  |  March 10, 2025
“The White Lotus” Episode 6: It’s a Family Affair

After the last episode in season 3 of Mike White‘s The White Lotus, when Sam Rockwell parachuted into the storyline and delivered one of television’s most unexpected monologues in perhaps the medium’s history (a stretch? if so, not by much), episode 6 had a lot of narrative momentum. White’s cosseted guests this year, whether their troubles are of a dangerously anguished variety (looking at you, Walton Goggins’

By The Credits  |  March 24, 2025
Following “Ballerina,” a Fifth “John Wick” Movie Has Been Confirmed

John Wick will never die.

And by “John Wick,” we might not necessarily be referring to the man himself, as played by Keanu Reeves in the first four films. By all accounts, Reeves’ nearly indestructible assassin died a noble death at the end of the last installment, John Wick: Chapter 4. We knew we’d be given another glimpse at the man in the upcoming spinoff, Ballerinawhich stars Ana de Armas as Eva Macarro as she begins training as an assassin in the traditions of the Ruska Roma.

By The Credits  |  March 12, 2025
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” Launches Tom Cruise Into the Super Bowl

If this is Tom Cruise’s last mission as IMF Agent Ethan Hunt, he chose an auspicious time to unleash a furious new look—in the midst of the Philadelphia Eagles prime time demolition of the reigning champs in the Kansas City Chiefs during the Super Bowl. The game wasn’t close, but Ethan’s hunt (pun intended) to secure a rogue AI and save the world is balanced on a knife’s edge.

The fresh look at Cruise’s 8th mission in the decades-old franchise,

By The Credits  |  February 10, 2025

Interview

Director

How Director Mohammad Rasoulof Shot his Oscar-Nominated “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in Secret

Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof wanted to tell a big story — so he went small. The Seed of the Sacred Fig explores his country’s authoritarian rule, repressive justice, patriarchal dominance, and women’s rights through its impact on one family.

Taking place during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, a nationwide protest sparked by the arrest of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman jailed for not wearing a hijab and beaten to death while in custody,

By Chris Koseluk  |  February 18, 2025

Interview

Director

No Cuts, Pure Tension: “Adolescence” Director Philip Barantini on Crafting Netflix Thriller in Unbroken Single Takes

British actor Stephen Graham is so reliably intense he played Al Capone for Martin Scorsese in Boardwalk Empire, stared down Al Pacino in The Irishman, executive producer and co-starred in the bare knuckle boxing drama A Thousand Blows, and earned the prestigious Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) award for his contributions to UK television. Now he’s co-written the acutely tense Adolescence (streaming on Netflix on March 13),

By Hugh Hart  |  March 13, 2025

Interview

Director

“Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip” Director Marvin Lemus on a Family Adventure Through New Mexico

The title says it all: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip is a PG comedy that follows a rambunctious family on an RV trek through New Mexico. Their destination? A very old village in Mexico, home to an ancient stone idol. By returning the haunted talisman to its ancestral home, 11-year-old Alexander (newcomer Thom Nemer) thinks he can lift the curse bringing bad luck to his mother, father,

By Hugh Hart  |  March 31, 2025
“Thunderbolts”: Marvel’s Wild Card Mixes Antiheroes and Indie Talent From A24 & More

Recently, Florence Pugh, one of the stars of Marvel’s upcoming antihero epic Thunderbolts, said the Marvel Cinematic Universe installment was very unlike your average MCU addition. In fact, Pugh told Empire that Thunderbolts feels much more like an indie film.

“It ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes,” Pugh told Empire. 

This isn’t just one of the film’s marquee names trying to give her movie an edge at the box office.

By The Credits  |  March 11, 2025
Ana de Armas and Keanu Reeves’ John Wick Spar in Lethal New “Ballerina” Trailer

Eva Macarro, meet John Wick.

Ana de Armas has entered the John Wick universe, so it’s fitting her character, Eva Macarro, faces off against the man himself. At the 1:45 mark in this new trailer, Eva and John have a snowy encounter in which neither are backing down. The reason Wick is alive here despite having met his fate in John Wick: Chapter 4 is because Ballerina is set during the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.

By The Credits  |  March 19, 2025

Interview

Special/Visual Effects

Be Still My Bursting Chest: “Alien: Romulus’s” Oscar-Nominated VFX Team on Finding Fresh Horror for the Franchise

Alien: Romulus Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Barba and FX Designer Alec Gillis bring the past and future together. Set between the events of Ridley Scott’s ferocious opener Alien and James Cameron’s muscular sequel Aliens, Barba, Gillis, and their team fused the tangible, practical horror and decay of the original films with a more modern, rock-and-roll sensibility. The viscerally immersive results earned the film an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.

By Jack Giroux  |  February 20, 2025
Dawn of a New DC: Go Behind-the-Scenes of James Gunn’s “Superman”

Did you notice something in the sky on April 18? It wasn’t a bird or a plane, it was, of course, Superman, officially soaring for DC Studios to celebrate his special day. April 18 is Superman Day, in case you were unaware, and to that end, DC Studios gave us a sneak-peak behind-the-scenes of James Gunn’s upcoming Superman, the first feature film to fly out of the gate for the newly unified DC Studios,

By The Credits  |  April 21, 2025
Ryan Coogler Does it Again: The Auteur’s Ambitious Epic “Sinners” Wins Box Office Crown

There was a reason why studios were competing to land Ryan Coogler’s ambitious new film, Sinnerswhen the writer-director and his star, Michael B. Jordan, were shopping the script in Hollywood. Coogler’s earned the respect of audiences across the world, having put out four excellent films in precisely four attempts, beginning with his 2013 breakout film Fruitvale Station and carrying through his subsequent three films,

By The Credits  |  April 21, 2025
Along With “The Amateur,” Sate Your Spy Appetite With These 6 Can’t-Miss Classics

In the wake of the release of director James Hawes’ The Amateur, starring Rami Malek as a CIA decoder who sets out to avenge his wife’s murder despite reluctance from his CIA superiors, now is the perfect time to revisit the genre’s rich history. From breathtaking sets to complex narratives complete with moral dilemmas and characters emblematic of the struggle between good and evil, the spy genre has everything a viewer could want.

By Evelyn Lott  |  April 18, 2025

Interview

Producer

From Script to Scream: Stephanie Allain on Producing Blumhouse’s Latest Nightmare, “The Woman in the Yard”

Stephanie Allain is a trailblazing producer. She was the Senior Vice President of Production at Columbia Pictures, where she oversaw films such as Boyz N The Hood and Desperado. From there, she became the President of Henson Pictures and eventually launched her production company, Homegrown Films. Homegrown Films is behind Hustle & FlowBeyond the Lights, and Exhibiting Forgiveness, a film Allain is deeply proud of.

By Jack Giroux  |  April 17, 2025

Interview

Production Designer

The Architecture of Espionage: Maria Djurkovic on Designing Rami Malek’s Revenge in “The Amateur”

Bohemian Rhapsody Oscar winner Rami Malik switches it up in The Amateur to play buttoned-down CIA analyst-turned-warrior Charlie Heller, who goes rogue in Europe to hunt down the terrorists responsible for the murder of his wife (Rachel Brosnahan). Tough-as-nails CIA handler (Laurence Fishburne) spearheads the Agency’s efforts to squash Charlie’s self-appointed mission, but he soon learns he’s dealing with a determined, lethally intelligent, and remarkably savvy operator who isn’t above blackmailing his own agency to get the revenge he seeks.

By Hugh Hart  |  April 15, 2025

Interview

Cinematographer

Calculated Frames: DP Martin Ruhe on Capturing “The Amateur’s” Deadly Chess Game

In the first part of our conversation with cinematographer Martin Ruhe about his latest film, The Amateur, he discussed director James Hawes’ grounded approach to Rami Malek’s CIA analyst-turned-vigilante by focusing on how his character’s humanity and intelligence were the keys to his playing a deadly game with trained spies and assassins. He’s able to do this not only because of his superior intelligence, but also because he blackmails his superiors (who have been ordering unsanctioned black ops) who know more than he does about the specifics of spycraft,

By Su Fang Tham  |  April 14, 2025

Interview

Cinematographer

Lethal Intelligence: How DP Martin Ruhe Shot a Decoder’s Revenge in “The Amateur”

Tapping into nostalgia for ‘90s spy thrillers of late, 20th Century Studios’ globe-trotting espionage revenge thriller features Rami Malek’s quietly ingenious CIA decryption analyst as the everyman reluctant hero. “He’s not a killer, he’s not trained with weapons, he probably wouldn’t survive in a fist fight. So, he has to be smarter than everybody else,” says German cinematographer Martin Ruhe (Showtime series The Agency, The Tender Bar) of Malek’s Charlie Heller.

By Su Fang Tham  |  April 11, 2025
Cannes Lineup Revealed: Ari Aster, Richard Linklater, Scarlett Johansson, Wes Anderson & More

The 78th Cannes Film Festival has announced its lineup, and once again, the South of France will be home to some of the biggest stars and most sought-after directors, including directorial debuts for two great performers and a first-time for the festival itself in its opening film.

Some of the well-known directors heading to the Croisette this year are Wes Anderson, arriving with his caper The Phoenician SchemeRichard Linklater for his new film Nouvelle Vague,

By The Credits  |  April 10, 2025

Interview

Director Screenwriter

“Connecticut’s Cinema Secret: How Dillon Bentlage’s “Watching Mr. Pearson” Found Its Perfect Location

Dementia was part of writer-director Dillon Bentlage’s family, his grandmother struggling with its early stages before passing away from cancer. Watching Mr. Pearson is a love letter to those living with symptoms and the people around them wanting to give them their best life. The feature stars Hugo Armstrong as Robert Pearson, a former Hollywood legend battling mental decline. When one of his caregivers, Caroline (Dominika Zawada), finds out that performing scenes from his film work gives him new life,

By Daron James  |  April 10, 2025
Ryan Coogler’s Big Swing With “Sinners” is Also a Love Letter to the Movie Theater

When Ryan Coogler was shopping the script for his fifth film around Hollywood, the excitement and competition for the rights to work with the filmmaker were equally high.  The major studios and streamers were vying to be able to produce and distribute Coogler’s original story, which, we’d eventually learn, was Sinners, his upcoming supernatural period piece. The reasons for the excitement and competition were obvious—Coogler hasn’t missed yet,

By The Credits  |  April 9, 2025
Game Changer: “Squid Game” Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk on his Audacious Ambitions for Seasons 2 & 3

Squid Game is a provocative experiment not only in strategy and skill, but also in the addictive pursuit of risking it all – even death – for a big win. Ironically, the show’s episodes are equally addictive, and fans demanded more after the innovative first season. Series creator, writer, and director Hwang Dong-hyuk didn’t intend to return to the intense filming schedule, but demand drove him to continue the captivating competition.

By Kelle Long  |  April 21, 2025

Interview

Showrunner

Devil Went Down to Georgia: How Erik Oleson Crafted Kevin Bacon’s Undead Demon Hunter in “The Bondsman”

Writer/producer Erik Oleson definitely knows a thing or two about characters chasing personal demons. He was the head writer on The Man in the High Castle, and went on to be showrunner and executive producer for seasons of both Marvel’s Daredevil and Amazon’s Carnival Row. It makes perfect sense, then, for him to take on Amazon’s new horror-comedy series The Bondsman

In it,

By Leslie Combemale  |  April 17, 2025

Interview

Director

Unreliable Narrators: Liz Garbus on Directing Hulu’s Chilling Adoption Mystery “Good American Family”

Good American Family rolled into living rooms last month like a TV Trojan Horse, appearing at first to be a domestic drama peppered with garden-variety stress. Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo plays super-mom Kristine Barnett, acclaimed author of “The Spark,” about her autistic son who gained early admission to Princeton University thanks to her nurturing ways and the loving support of husband Michael (Mark Duplass). Everything changes when the Indiana couple adopts Ukrainian orphan Natalia Grace,

By Hugh Hart  |  April 16, 2025

Interview

Director Stunt Coordinator/Stunt Person

“Daredevil: Born Again’s” Stunt Coordinator & Second Unit Director Philip Silvera on Big City Brawling

At the beginning of Season 1 of the Disney+ revival of the Daredevil storyline, Daredevil: Born Again, Marvel vigilante Matt Murdock/Daredevil is operating more or less as a yuppie. Matt has hung up his superhero suit to keep his heroics to the courthouse, working as a defense attorney and taking on clients pro bono when he believes in their innocence, but they can’t afford him. But with the murder of his friend and colleague,

By Susannah Edelbaum  |  April 15, 2025

Interview

Production Designer

Forging Feudal Japan: Emmy-Winning Production Designer Helen Jarvis Bringing “Shōgun” to Stunning Life

The ride is nearly complete. Four years ago, Helen Jarvis, who resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her husband, actor Robin Mossley, took on her first project as a production designer on the historical drama Shōgun, set in 1600 feudal Japan. The series went on to become a cultural phenomenon, breaking Emmy records for its intimate character-driven storyline, visual beauty, and moving performances, which gave us the phrases “Why tell a dead man the future,” “Flowers are only flowers because they fall,”

By Daron James  |  April 14, 2025
A Greek Tragedy in Thailand: Mike White on “The White Lotus” Season 3 Finale’s Explosive Ending

The deaths (plural) that were meted out during the season 3 finale of The White Lotus delivered yet another bitter final meal for some of our guests in Mike White’s zeitgeist-dominating series. After an eight-day stay in the Thailand-set resort, White’s anthology series drew to a bloody close, taking two of the season’s most beloved characters, Walton Goggins’ searching, soulful, sad Rick, and his delightful, daffy, even more soulful girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood).

By The Credits  |  April 7, 2025
New “Black Mirror” Season 7 Trailer Reveals Episode Details Ahead of Series Return on April 10

We know about as much information on Black Mirror season 7 as we’ll get before one of the great sci-fi series of all time returns to Netflix on April 10.

A new trailer includes more details about Charlie Brooker‘s unnervingly prescient anthology series’ return, including the titles of all six episodes, the synopsis, cast, run time, and credits for each episode. Season 7 also boasts, for the first time in the series’

By The Credits  |  March 31, 2025
A Gripping, Ripping “Andor” Season 2 Trailer Sets Its Course for Rebellion

“I came with you to a be a part of something,” Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) says at the top of the official trailer for Andor season 2. In season 1, our titular hero started out wanting to be anything but, yet he was swept up in events far larger than them himself, and are leading him on his fateful path to eventually being a part of the team that steals the Death Star plans—a team that paid the ultimate price in their successful mission that was the heart of the 2016 film Rogue One.

By The Credits  |  March 24, 2025

Interview

Producer

Producer Hsinyi Liu on Forging a Path From Taiwan to “Fleabag” & “The Ballad of Wallis Island”

Moving halfway around the world to live and work in a different culture and language presents inevitable challenges, but there is also a wealth of opportunities available to those who leave the familiar behind and immerse themselves abroad. This was the case for Taiwan-born and raised producer Hsinyi Liu, who learned the joys available to those willing to make the leap when she relocated to London more than two decades ago.

In an attempt at a compromise between her family’s expectations of a financially stable career and her own creative impulses,

By Gavin Blair  |  March 24, 2025
“The White Lotus” Episode 6: It’s a Family Affair

After the last episode in season 3 of Mike White‘s The White Lotus, when Sam Rockwell parachuted into the storyline and delivered one of television’s most unexpected monologues in perhaps the medium’s history (a stretch? if so, not by much), episode 6 had a lot of narrative momentum. White’s cosseted guests this year, whether their troubles are of a dangerously anguished variety (looking at you, Walton Goggins’

By The Credits  |  March 24, 2025

Interview

Special/Visual Effects

Be Still My Bursting Chest: “Alien: Romulus’s” Oscar-Nominated VFX Team on Finding Fresh Horror for the Franchise

Alien: Romulus Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Barba and FX Designer Alec Gillis bring the past and future together. Set between the events of Ridley Scott’s ferocious opener Alien and James Cameron’s muscular sequel Aliens, Barba, Gillis, and their team fused the tangible, practical horror and decay of the original films with a more modern, rock-and-roll sensibility. The viscerally immersive results earned the film an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.

By Jack Giroux  |  February 20, 2025

Interview

Special/Visual Effects

“The Substance” of Nightmares: Oscar-Nominated Makeup Effects Master Pierre Olivier Persin on His Terrifying Transformations

Since its release last fall, writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s body horror thriller The Substance has artfully shocked Academy Award voters to the tune of five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Outstanding Actress nominee Demi Moore portrays aging actress Elisabeth, who gets way more than she bargained for after injecting herself with a serum that makes her look younger in the form of lithe “Sue,” played by Margaret Qualley.

By Hugh Hart  |  February 19, 2025

Interview

Sound Designer

“A Complete Unknown”: Orchestrating 60+ Live Performances for Oscar-Worthy Sound

In one of this year’s tour de force performances, Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of one of America’s greatest singer-songwriters took almost six years to perfect (partly thanks to COVD-19 delays in production). For director James Mangold’s music biopic, A Complete Unknown, Chalamet not only learned to play the guitar and harmonica for the film, but also mastered Dylan’s famously idiosyncratic style to deliver over 40 flawless live-to-camera performances as the narrative charts his meteoric rise after arriving in New York in 1961.

By Su Fang Tham  |  February 19, 2025

Interview

Screenwriter

No More Games: “September 5’s” Oscar-Nominated Writers on the Day Terror Took Center Stage

The thriller September 5, directed and co-written by Tim Fehlbaum, revisits the day the Palestinian militant group Black September took nine Israeli athletes hostage during the 1972 Munich Olympics. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, the script, which Fehlbaum wrote with Moritz Binder, is a tightly-paced journalism procedural centered on the ABC Sports studio’s broadcast of the attack as it happened.

Peter Sarsgaard stars as Roone Arledge,

By Susannah Edelbaum  |  February 18, 2025

Interview

Director

How Director Mohammad Rasoulof Shot his Oscar-Nominated “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in Secret

Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof wanted to tell a big story — so he went small. The Seed of the Sacred Fig explores his country’s authoritarian rule, repressive justice, patriarchal dominance, and women’s rights through its impact on one family.

Taking place during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, a nationwide protest sparked by the arrest of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman jailed for not wearing a hijab and beaten to death while in custody,

By Chris Koseluk  |  February 18, 2025

Interview

Screenwriter

“Conclave” Oscar Nominee Peter Straughan on Scripting a Devilishly Good Vatican Thriller

Conclave is great, gripping entertainment from the first shot to the last. It’s a drama, both honest and escapist, deftly shot, performed, and staged by artists at the top of their respective games. In the hands of Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Peter Straughan, Edward Berger’s contemplative film moves briskly within the Vatican walls. A movie that takes us into one of the most secretive rituals on Earth – about the search for a new pope – is remarkably light on its holy feet.

By Jack Giroux  |  February 14, 2025

Interview

Director

Julian Brave NoiseCat & Emily Kassie’s on “Sugarcane”: Their Oscar-Nominated Exploration of Trauma and Truth

Toronto-born filmmaker and investigative journalist Emily Kassie has covered conflict around the globe, from the Taliban’s crackdown on women to child labor in Turkey. “But I had never turned the lens on my own country,” says Kassie. That’s changed with Sugarcane, which mixes a grassroots investigation with personal and collective reckoning of years of forced separation, assimilation, and abuse of Indigenous children by Catholic priests at St. Joseph’s Mission Indian residential school in British Columbia,

By Loren King  |  February 14, 2025

Interview

Producer

Oscar-Nominated Producer Maria Carlota Bruno on Recreating a Transcendent Heroine in “I’m Still Here”

In 1964, a coup d’état overthrew Brazilian president João Goulart, initiating a military dictatorship that lasted until 1985. The former congressman Rubens Paiva went into self-exile at the time of the coup but returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1970, where he settled into a pleasant household near Leblon Beach with his wife, Eunice Paiva, and their five children. Rubens continued quietly supporting dissident Brazilian expatriates and, in January 1971, was arrested and disappeared during a military raid.

By Susannah Edelbaum  |  February 14, 2025

Interview

Director Screenwriter

“Nickel Boys” Writer/Director RaMell Ross on Camera as Consciousness in His Oscar-Nominated Film

An introspective, promising teenager hitchhiking to college gets a ride in a car that turns out to be stolen. The driver is Black, and so is the boy. Deemed an accomplice despite his innocence, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is remanded to Nickel Academy, a segregated Florida reform school. Nickel Boys, the Oscar-nominated film based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys, follows the harrowing path Elwood is placed on by the Jim Crow South.

By Susannah Edelbaum  |  February 13, 2025

Interview

Costume Designer

“Conclave’s” Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer Lisy Christl on the Fashion of Faith

Following his Oscar-winning WWI epic, All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger’s latest, Conclave, focuses on a different kind of battle, dropping us into the Vatican in his twisty ecclesiastical thriller. After the death of the current Pontiff, the honorable and evenhanded Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is charged with convening one of the most secretive rituals in the world, the conclave, where over 100 cardinals from around the world are sequestered until they decide who amongst them will be the next leader of the Catholic Church.

By Su Fang Tham  |  February 13, 2025