Filmmaker Sacha Polak and actress Vicky Knight first collaborated on the acclaimed feature Dirty God about an acid attack survivor, which world premiered at Sundance in 2019 and saw Knight named a Breakthrough Brit by BAFTA and receive both Best Actress and Most Promising Newcomer nominations at that year's British Independent Film Awards (BIFA). Silver... Continue Reading →
Multiple Emmy-nominated Saturday Night Live writer Julio Torres first caught my attention as an actor with his absorbingly understated supporting turns in comedies on film and television such as The Other Two, Together Together, Shrill, Search Party, and more recently a characterful voice performance that further queered the animated movie Nimona. Making those roles his... Continue Reading →
Writer-director Daniel Levy's Netflix film Good Grief is a testimony to the complexities of grief. More than that, it's also a reflection on the received wisdom of grieving and how we function beyond it, or more importantly, with it. Too often, we're told that grief is a cry-it-out at the funeral scene and a bounce back... Continue Reading →
SAPPH-O-RAMA, a 30-film series exploring the eccentric, enduring, and genre-encompassing history of the lesbian image in cinema runs at New York City's Film Forum from Friday, February 2nd through Tuesday, February 13th, 2024. This swoon-worthy celebration of the sapphic canon—groundbreaking, cult favorite, or under-seen selections from the silent era to present day—includes films by Dorothy... Continue Reading →
"We're all born naked and the rest is drag", RuPaul has been pointing out for decades. British-Iraqi-Egyptian filmmaker Amrou Al-Kadhi's assured feature directorial and screenwriting debut Layla, which just premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance, could be seen as an engaging narrative thesis on that playful, but astute observation. As the film... Continue Reading →
Director Esteban Arango returns to Sundance with his riveting, stylish, and kinetic sophomore feature Ponyboi, which just received its world premiere in the US Dramatic Competition at the 40th edition of the festival. Written, produced by, and starring queer intersex nonbinary Latinx model, actor, and activist River Gallo, the seeds of the film were in... Continue Reading →
Writer-director Nicholas Anthony’s debut feature, shot entirely on iPhone 13 Pro Max, takes us into the mind of Max (Bronte Charlotte), a woman in Melbourne on the verge of turning 30. A struggling writer, she’s hit a wall where her youthful enthusiasm and drive have been worn down by rejection. As she tries to live... Continue Reading →
2024 update: Variance Films and LD Entertainment will release National Anthem in select theaters on Friday, July 12th, expanding wide on Friday, July 19th, 2024. Growing up in Evergreen, Colorado, some of filmmaker and photographer Luke Gilford's most vivid childhood memories are of being at the rodeo with his father, who was a member of... Continue Reading →
British writer-director Janis Pugh's remarkable sophomore narrative feature Chuck Chuck Baby, which received its North American premiere at last month's 48th Toronto International Film Festival is a celebration of love between working class women in all its forms with a infectious carpe diem spirit. In industrial North Wales, we meet thirty-something Helen (Louise Brealey) who... Continue Reading →
When Roger Ross Williams met Saúl Armendáriz, better known as Cassandro, for a 2016 documentary he was directing for The New Yorker—The Man Without a Mask—the filmmaker immediately knew he'd found the subject of his first scripted narrative feature. Making the move from amateur wrestling in El Paso, Armendáriz became a Mexican-American icon with the... Continue Reading →
