Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Going Up: Knoxville’s Elev8or Pitch Competition
There’s a familiar ritual when you arrive at a film festival: check into your hotel, AirbnB or friend’s couch, pick up your lanyard and head to the opening night event. Most often, that event is an out-of-competition, relentlessly inoffensive opening night film provided by a sponsor that stimulates polite but limited conversation at the afterparty. I’ve participated in that ritual so many times that I was pleasantly surprised by what was on offer the first night at last November’s FILM FEST KNOX. There were multiple events, with the central one the screening of not one film but eight. At the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 18, 2025 -
Editor’s Letter
Welcome to the summer 2025 edition of Filmmaker. As that sentence connotes, Filmmaker is a quarterly publication, and our publishing cadence is such that, for our print edition (as opposed to the web), we can step outside the frenetic daily news cycle a bit. Yes, we try to sync up the films we feature to their release cycles, but we were happy to make one of our occasional exceptions for Vadim Rizov’s interview with Wes Anderson about The Phoenician Scheme, which will have been in theaters for a few weeks by the time you read this. We’ve been trying to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 18, 2025 -
“You Think You’re Scared of These Creatures, Well, Look Into Our Own Dark Hearts”: Sean Byrne on His Cannes-Premiering Shark Attack Horror Film, Dangerous Animals
For most viewers, sharks and horror cinema were permanently conjoined with Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws, one of the first wide release summer blockbusters, and one with shocks far more intense than its PG rating would indicate. Today, shark horror has migrated to the small (and vertical) screen, with TikTok’s algorithm serving many of us — me, somewhat inexplicably, included — a never ending gallery of shark attacks, menacing underwater shark approaches and the occasional gliding shark beauty shot. Australian director Sean Byrne’s Cannes-premiering Dangerous Animals confidently mines these lingering fears and fascinations as it mashes up the shark horror […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 17, 2025 -
“A Redemption Story That Gets Derailed By a Revenge Story”: Ariella Mastroianni and Ryan J. Sloan on Gazer
There are a set of rules that have long-guided ultra-low and microbudget production. Lots of daylight exteriors, one or two central locations (to minimize company moves and location rental cost), a small cast, no stunts, no child actors and a compressed shooting schedule. If today it’s not uncommon to see a 24-day schedule on films of $12 million, and most independents with sub $3-million budgets are boarded between 18 and 24 days, a filmmaker considering their first ultra-low-budget picture should think about going even lower, to 11 or 12 days, even. And, of course, shooting digital is probably the economically […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2025 -
“The Biggest Challenge Was That Janis Has Led an Incredibly Interesting and Varied Life”: Director Varda Bar-Kar on Janis Ian: Breaking Silence
Even if you don’t count yourself has a diehard Janis Ian fan, the singer-songwriter’s songs, such as her 1967 hit “Society’s Child,” when they appear in Varda Bar-Kar’s compelling bio-doc, Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, will strike a memory chord, so ubiquitous they have been across radio playlists for more than half a century. It’s a real strength of Bar-Kar’s film, which is organized around several of Ian’s most memorable albums, including the eponymous 1993 release, that she weaves these compositions into a rich fabric that places Ian’s personal life story — her coming out, her relationship with and 2003 marriage […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 7, 2025 -
Seven Documentary Organizations Sign Letter Decrying DOGE National Endowment for the Humanities Cuts
Seven filmmaker support organizations, including the International Documentary Association, Women Make Movies and Third World Newsreel, have signed a letter protesting Trump administration cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities that will affect both independent documentary filmmakers and non-profit organizations. In addition to funds for future grants, the administration is rescinding grants awarded during the Biden administration — monies that filmmakers and organizations had already planned to spend. The New York Times reported today: Starting late Wednesday night, state humanities councils and other grant recipients began receiving emails telling them their funding was ended immediately. Instead, they were told, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 4, 2025 -
Sundance Institute Announces Boulder, Colorado, as the New Home for the Sundance Film Festival Beginning in 2027
The Sundance Institute announced today that, beginning in 2027, Boulder, Colorado will be the new home for its Sundance Festival. Commented Amanda Kelso, Sundance Institute acting CEO in a press release, “Boulder is an art town, tech town, mountain town, and college town. It is a place where the Festival can build and flourish. This is the beginning of a bold, new journey as we invite everyone to be part of our community and to be entertained and inspired. We can’t imagine a better fit than Boulder.” From the press release: Together with the Boulder host committee, the Institute envisions […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 27, 2025 -
Watch Now: Eight Short Films from Filmfort 2025
Filmmaker is proud to continue our annual partnership with the Filmfort Film Festival by exclusively hosting eight short films from this year’s lineup, which will be available to view on our site through Saturday. The four-day festival, which occurs during the Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho, highlights an array of emerging independent cinema. Alongside robust film programming, Filmfort also features DIY panels and filmmaker Q&As in the heart of the city’s downtown area. See the Filmfort ’25 line-up here, and check out this year’s selection of films below. A Floresta dir. Brooks Dierdorff 2024, USA/Brazil, 16 mins Synopsis: […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 27, 2025 -
“The Power of a ‘Like’ When Someone Needs It Is More Powerful Than We Realize”: Tracie Laymon On Her Heartwarming Bob Trevino Likes It
To this cranky viewer constantly engaged in a battle to limit his social media time, the concept of Tracie Laymon’s debut feature, Bob Trevino Likes It, almost feels like time-travel science fiction, a trip back to a world where social media provided positivity and good vibes, not toxic rancor, nefarious scammers and wellness grift. In the comedy drama, now in release from Roadside Attractions, an adrift young woman, Lily Trevino (Barbie Ferreira), who is forever let down by the gross insensitivities of her biological father (French Stewart), finds both a pal and needed self affirmation by randomly befriending a man […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 26, 2025 -
Editor’s Letter
One of my earliest memories is visiting my grandmother in the small town of De Soto, Wis. I remember being fixated on the appliance providing the air that supported her emphysema, a shiny, alien-like oxygen tank squatting in her living room. The lingering vision of that corner of midwestern space—it’s not indirect enough to be what Freud called a screen memory, an anodyne remembrance obscuring something more traumatic. But the fact that I emotionally, viscerally reacted to the news last August that David Lynch was housebound with that disease and on supplemental oxygen, indicates that maybe it did function that […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2025
