Sundancing on My Own: My Four Extraordinary Days in Park City
Sundance has always been a festival I had admired at a distance. How Robert Redford had gone about using his platform to launch the careers of countless filmmakers for over four decades had always left me in awe. So many of my favorite films had premiered at Redford’s festival nestled in the snow-capped mountains of […]
A Call for Peace and Human Connection: Hikari on “Rental Family”
As I sat in my favorite movie palace, the Music Box Theatre, waiting for my wife—Cinema Femme founder Rebecca Martin—to arrive for that evening’s eagerly awaited Chicago International Film Festival screening of Hikari’s “Rental Family,” I overheard the woman next to me mention her plans to see my all-time favorite film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” […]
Daviel Shy on Creating and Starring in Series “The Lovers”
When a laid-off sex worker falls for a mail carrier in a world frozen by pandemic unknowns, it will take the help of an astrologer, cinema guru, cam model, retired dungeon owner, porn star, and an infected host of the supernatural, to discover a new way of loving. A dreamy soft sci-fi romance. Cinema Femme sat down with Daviel […]
Kick Out the Conventions: Agnieszka Holland on “Franz,” “The Secret Garden” and More
With the 61st Chicago International Film Festival nearly in the rearview mirror, there are so many memories from the past several days that I know I will be cherishing for years to come. Yet the one that stands above them all is the half-hour I got to spend last weekend speaking with one of the […]
Spritz & Sofia: My First Venice Film Festival
In 2019, I crashed the Cannes Film Festival. Well — not really. I went legitimately with a pass I applied for (if you work in the film industry, you usually qualify). But I had no purpose being there for work or business. I’m just working on my own film directing path and wanted to see […]
Attracted to Abstraction: Lucile Hadžihalilović on “The Ice Tower”
“If you can’t play with the language, you are not reinventing the language.” This is what Argentine director Gaspar Noé told me when I interviewed him fifteen years ago about his 2009 masterpiece, “Enter the Void.” There is perhaps no filmmaker who has crafted more visceral portrayals of primal human experiences, particularly sex, violence and […]
It Was All a Miracle: Embeth Davidtz on “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight”
I was ten years old when Danny DeVito’s euphoric screen adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1988 novel Matilda arrived in theaters. I had read the book so many times that the cover had fallen off, and in the character of Miss Honey, I found an embodiment of all the teachers who had been an invaluable, nurturing […]
A Profound Experience of Rewriting: Eva Victor on “Sorry, Baby”
As annoyed as I was about Barry Jenkins, one of the greatest filmmakers working today, recently helming a prequel to the worst Disney remake in history, the Oscar-winning director of “Moonlight” has also been helping launch some of the most exciting careers in modern cinema over the past few years. I’m thinking specifically of Charlotte […]
He Believed in Me: Sabrina S. Sutherland on Her Favorite Person, David Lynch
It’s difficult to put into words the gratitude I have for Sabrina S. Sutherland. The collaborations she forged with filmmaker David Lynch, particularly over the last decade, have transformed my life in ways I never could have anticipated. Sutherland executive produced Lynch’s 18-part masterpiece, 2017’s “Twin Peaks: The Return”—or as she prefers to call it, […]
Hannah Welever on shaking things up with her sex positive short “Soirée”
Hannah Welever is a queer filmmaker based in New York, but her roots are Midwestern. In her newest short, “Soirée,” Welever creatively holds space for women’s bodies, and how often they are misunderstood. After an unfortunately awkward hookup gone awry, Reed (Naomi Walley) takes a literal trip inside her body, and meets the personification of […]
Johanna Putnam on her film “Shudderbugs” and returning to familiar spaces in uncertain times
Samantha (Sam) Cole returns to her childhood home when her mother suddenly passes. In place of familiar spaces and memories, Sam finds only uneasiness and confusion. Things are missing, the environment seems unnatural, and the neighbor (Noah) is suspiciously obtuse. Isolated with these mysteries, a scavenger hunt her mom had prepared for her upcoming birthday, […]
Florence Bouvy on examining themes of human connection, pain, loss, and love, in “Where We Stay”
From writer and director Florence Bouvy, “Where We Stay” is a beautiful and touching examination of human connection and unspoken truths. The film was partially inspired by Florence’s own story of loss, when her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and the period of pain, grief, and love that followed. She noticed how in those […]