Interview: Ira Sachs on "Frankie"

by Chris Feil

Frankie is the latest film from director Ira Sachs, one that transplants his trademark humane examination of family dynamics to a beautiful town in Portugal. Isabelle Huppert plays the titular actress, who has insisted on a vacation with family and friends after receiving a fatal diagnosis. The film - also starring Marisa Tomei, Brendan Gleeson, Jérémire Renier, and Greg Kinnear - is Sachs’ most sprawling ensemble yet. In the span of the day, there are reconciliations and aired heartbreaks shared between lovers, step-siblings, and most importantly parents and children - all set against the revealing truth of nature and the landscape. When I sat down to talk with Sachs about the film and his point of view as a storyteller, he was every bit as warm and thoughtful and introspective as his films...

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That time when one of the great cinematographers hooked up with Jake Gyllenhaal...

by Nathaniel R

Here's a little teaser for a forthcoming interview with Rodrigo Prieto, the two-time Oscar nominated DP whose latest film is Martin Scorsese's The Irishman. The famed Mexican cinematographer turns 54 next month. We'd always seem him in photos, handsome, crouched down behind cameras with tightly cropped hair. In person he's a tall silver fox and he's let his hair grow out. He could have been in front of cameras but instead got behind them from an early age. And what a career he's had. Standing majestically amongst his classics is Brokeback Mountain (2005) so during a lengthy sit down we had at the Middleburg Film Festival this past weekend, we asked him how he ended up with his only onscreen role.

We don't know if you knew this but he plays the Mexican hustler who Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) picks up during a quick trip south of the border. That's the trip that Ennis and Jack fight about, later in the movie, lighting a bonfire of scorched feeling in that famous 'I wish I knew how to quit you' scene...

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Interview: Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts on 'For Sama'

by Murtada Elfadl

For Sama, the new documentary in theaters that chronicles the five years of the Syrian uprising in Aleppo, is presented as a document from a mother trying to explain what happened to her newborn daughter. Yet what filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab shows through capturing the minutiae of everyday life in a city under siege and continuous bombardment, is a love letter to people committed to building a better society even as the situation around them becomes dangerous. Al-Kateab, a journalist, and her husband Hamza, a doctor, make the choice several times to stay in Aleppo and continue their work while starting a family, building a life, helping their community, hoping they can sustain despite the circumstances. The film presents a narrative rarely seen on screen, intimately documenting life from inside a city ravaged by war, as its people are just trying to live through the days. We recently spoke to Al-Kateab and her British co-director Edward Watts in New York. (This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)

Murtada Elfadl: How did you come to work together?

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Interview: Lulu Wang on 'The Farewell' and why it's important to declare she's American

by Murtada Elfadl

When I meet Lulu Wang at the A24 offices in Manhattan, she looks really cool despite the hot weather and despite the fact that she has “not been part of the world since January because I've just been traveling.” Perhaps it’s the effect of Headspace, the meditation app she uses. “It has all of these five or ten minute meditations. I listen to in the car ride between going to screenings. It just helps me breathe.”

January was when her second feature film as a writer and director, The Farewell, premiered at Sundance to ecstatic reviews, including one from this writer. Since then Wang has been flying around the world as the film played at many other film festivals. Wang has drawn on her own family’s history to tell a warm, funny and poignant tale about a young Queens artist, Billi (played by Awkwafina), and the tender relationship she has with her grandmother, whom she calls Nai Nai or "grandma" in Mandarin, and who lives in Changchun, China. When Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) receives a terminal cancer diagnosis, the family decides to hide the news from her and instead concocts a scheme to marry off a cousin, so that they have an excuse to gather around the grandmother one more time before she goes. This lie doesn’t sit well with Billi and the film shows us the friction and love as the family grapples with this. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

 Murtada Elfadl: There were reports last week that you turned down a big payday from a streamer and chose to go with a theatrical release. Why is that important to you?  

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Interview: Ritesh Batra on 'Photograph' and why he makes movies about longing

by Murtada Elfadl

By his own admission Ritesh Batra makes movies about longing. Movies about people trying to connect. That was evident in The Lunchbox (2013), where two strangers meet and bond through a case of mistaken lunch deliveries. In Our Souls at Night (2017) two older neighbors - played by Jane Fonda and Robert Redford - try to fill their lonely nights by sleeping in the same bed, for companionship not sex.

In his latest film, Photograph, two strangers from different backgrounds also try to connect. He’s Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a struggling street photographer. She’s Sanya (Sanya Malhotra) a shy Accounting student. They meet when he takes her photo at the Gateway of India, the famous arch monument in Mumbai. Rafi is being pressured to marry by his grandmother so he convinces Sanya to pose as his fiancée during a family visit. The film tells more with the silences between the strangers than any words, Batra is able to let emotions rise quietly but clearly to the audience. We recently interviewed him in New York about why these themes keep attracting him. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity...

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