Interviews

Award-winning film director Katja Gauriloff’s new movie, Je'vida is a story about the importance of discovering and accepting your roots. An aunt and her niece meet for the first time when they drive to Finnish Lapland to empty a house they’ve inherited.

Founded 25 years ago, in 1998, the Taipei Film Festival has strong ties with its society, as it was born in a historic moment known as “the liberalization and democratization of Taiwan”, and then became the first film festival in the country to be funded by a city government. It will celebrate its new edition from June 22nd to July 8th, but it also organizes year-round educational programs, especially for young filmmakers.

As announced by this headline-grabbing title, it would be an understatement to describe up-and-coming filmmaker Musa Alderson-Clarke as unhappy with former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who ran the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2022. In Alderson-Clarke’s protagonist Kaz (Shadrach Agozino), we meet a grieving man whose mother suffered from depression and who killed herself during the lockdown of the Covid pandemic, a tragedy that coincided with the time when Johnson himself was attending an office Christmas party.

Leah Meyerhoff takes us behind the curtain of Film Fatales, an art nonprofit that has been crucial for a more gender diverse equity presence in the entertainment business. For decades, the film industry has struggled with gender disparities and systemic biases that have limited opportunities for gender-marginalized creators.

“How do you respond when the great Howard Gordon (Homeland, 24) says, ‘We’ve a role for you,’ then describes the character as, ‘A mess who makes terrible decisions with men and is not a funny comedian…?’” So asks comedian Whitney Cummings of the packed theater in West Hollywood at the THR Live event, pausing with perfect timing so the audience’s laughter won’t drown out her next words. The circumstances faced by her character on Fox’s Accused moved the women’s activist deeply.

When director Josephine Landertinger Forero first met Cris, he was one of the "honorary members of the poverty club" abandoned in a remote corner of the Caribbean Sea. But the experienced eye of the documentary filmmaker knew that the island where the young man lived, Tierra Bomba, was too small for him.

Eva Longoria takes on another challenge in her career. After enjoying success as an actress and producer, Eva went behind the camera to direct her first film, Flamin' Hot.

In the new film documentary Americonned, filmmaker Sean Claffey explores the tragic, destabilizing effects of income inequality on every level of society as his cameras follow five subjects over four years, recording their struggle to find the American dream. But the film also offers hope, talking to experts who look back through history at similar critical moments of instability, remembering significant labor movements that were born in such times.

The Netflix film A Beautiful Life has a simple premise: Elliott is a fisherman who lives a quiet life in a small town in Denmark. His friend Oliver dreams of becoming a rock star, but when the widow of a legendary star named Suzanne hears Elliott and Oliver perform, it is Elliott that she wants to lead on a journey to pop stardom.

Angela Lee is the Director of Artist Development at Film Independent, a non-profit that aims to foster inclusion and innovation in the world of visual storytelling. Lee not only is a successful producer in her own right, but she also leads some of the most forward and relevant fiction and non-fiction storytelling labs and programs in the USA.