Polish filmmaker Hanna Polak was unable to turn away from the homeless children she found living in and around Moscow. Her Oscar-nominated short film Children of Leningradsky (T/F 2005) explores the culture of children living in and around that city’s major railway station. But this impressive and moving work would prove to be just the beginning of … Continued
For several years now, Kevin B. Lee has been pioneering an innovative form of film criticism, recutting films into insightful and provocative video essays. Last summer he first shared Transformers: the Premake (T/F 2015) and for many made the leap from criticism to cinema. The Premake is a “desktop documentary” examining the sprawling production of … Continued
Note: This interview first ran in November 2014 to mark Actress‘ theatrical premiere. We are sharing it again as Actress is now available to watch at home on numerous platforms including DVD from Cinema Guild (with an exclusive essay from film critic  Eric Hynes), Netflix Instant and iTunes. Brandy Burre scored a career breakthrough when she landed … Continued
Those Who Feel the Fire Burning (T/F 2015) opens in New York City (at Cinema Village) and in Los Angeles (at Laemmle’s Noho 7) on December 18. In anticipation of its theatrical release, we’re reposting our interview with Knibbe from this past winter, when the film screened at True/False. Director Morgan Knibbe’s ambitious … Continued
In 2003, filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer first began investigating the unacknowledged and under-reported mass killing of over 500,000 purported “communists” by Indonesia’s military junta and its proxies in 1965-66. He quickly learned about Ramli, one victim of the genocide whose horrific death was widely discussed, if still not part of the official history. After his attempts … Continued
In his first film War-Wearied filmmaker Laurent Becue-Renard discovered a role for the camera in therapy, observing group sessions with survivors of war in Bosnia suffering from post-traumatic stress. In his new film Of Men and War (T/F 2015) Laurent and his team developed a similar approach, filming with traumatized American soldiers over months and years, … Continued
Note: This interview originally ran back in October during the theatrical premiere of The Overnighters (T/F 2014)Â NYC. We are sharing it again as The Overnighters is returning Columbia today at Ragtag Cinema for a short pre-T/F 2015 run. “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his … Continued
Note: This interview first ran in April 2014, when Approaching the Elephant screened at the Sarasota film festival. We are sharing it again in honor of the film’s theatrical premiere at the Independent Film Project in Brooklyn, NYC where it is playing through February 26. Amanda Rose Wilder’s debut feature Approaching the Elephant spies into the … Continued
Documenting something as nebulous as a revolution is a difficult challenge for a filmmaker. In Cairo Drive (T/F 2014) Sherief Elkatsha takes an unusual and startlingly effective approach. Riding shotgun and talking traffic with motorists on Cairo’s congested streets, he captures a fascinating mosaic of the frustrations and ambitions of a city on the edge. The film … Continued
Jessica Oreck’s sublime, incisive cinema observes the tangled relationship between man and the rest of nature. Her latest work, The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga (T/F 2014), transports us to contemporary Eastern Europe, where, among other ideas, we reflect on our perceptions of the forest. Oreck nimbly weaves breathtaking, Super 16mm images of everyday … Continued
