Interviews

NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFMLA), one of the HFPA grantees, champions emerging and diverse filmmakers and storytellers from around the world and provides a forum where filmmakers can be recognized for their contributions, have open audience discussions about their work and connect with industry professionals for insight on distribution, production and representation. We caught up with Larry Laboe, Co-Founder and Executive Director of NewFilmmakers Los Angeles, whose industry credits include producer for Ctrl (2009) and Fact Checkers Unit.

In 2008, Robert Pattinson became famous overnight. Portraying moody vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight franchise, based on the best-selling novels by Stephenie Meyer.

Mo Abudu has caught the world’s attention. As the daughter of Nigerian parents living in the UK, the media mogul was intent on creating African content that would travel outside of the African continent.

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (born December 16, 1978, in Kanagawa, Japan) is a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He is best known for the film “Drive My Car” (2021), which has been nominated for a number of prestigious film awards, including four Academy Awards, and has just recently won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language.

On Thursday, February 17th, in Los Angeles, a full retrospective dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini was inaugurated on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. It’s the first big event of a five-year partnership between the Italian studio Cinecittà and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

When Italian film director, painter, and inventor Alessio Della Valle (who was born and raised in Florence, Italy, and studied film in Los Angeles) had the idea of a thriller set in the world of art, he probably didn’t think that stars like Jeremy Piven, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Emile Hirsh and Paz Vega, and an Oscar-winning editor like Zach Staenberg (The Matrix) would immediately come on board. But they did because of the strength and originality of the script, and they are now supporting the US limited release of the film, American Night, a neo-noir action thriller set in the New York City contemporary art world.

In 2000, Halle Berry won her first major award - the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Made for Television - for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. Berry built on her success and went on to have an amazing career as an actress across all genres.

In his last interview, the legendary director/producer/writer/actor talks to HFPA journalist Elisabeth Sereda about The Last Picture Show, his friend Orson Welles, his foray into journalism, who was a "pain in the neck" to work with and the five icons he wrote about in his upcoming, posthumous book. Check out Golden Globes Around the World Podcast: Peter Bogdanovich.

A pairing made in film heaven: director and cinematographer Spike Lee and Ernest Dickerson, inseparable in almost everything they did as artists in the 80s and 90s, making six movies together, and great friends in real life. Recently the two sat down together in downtown Los Angeles, where they talked for an hour and a half in front of a rapt audience of 400 at the Colburn School of Music.

Moroccan actor Youssef Kerkour has gone from being typecast as a terrorist to acting opposite Adam Driver and Al Pacino in House of Gucci. And it seems there’s more to come, as Kerkour tells us he will once again be working with iconic director Ridley Scott on the Napoleon Bonaparte drama Kitbag, alongside Joaquin Phoenix.