Browsing: Conversations

Aurora’s Sunrise, directed by Inna Sahakyan is the story of Aurora, a teenager when she loses her family to the first genocide of the twentieth century, a nightmare that she herself barely survived. But when asked to not just remember but relive this experience all over again, she said “yes”. https://vimeo.com/767732141 In 1915, as WWI raged on, the Ottoman Empire singled out its entire Armenian population for destruction. Only 14 years old at the time, Aurora’s story was tragically relatable. Forced onto a death march towards the Syrian desert, she lost her entire family before being kidnapped and sold into…

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Prey is a Hulu original action/sci-fi movie and a prequel to the movies in the Predator franchise. Set 300 years in the past, this Predator origin story tells the tale of the very first alien encounter, threatening the lives of the Comanche Nation. Before there was Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger), there was Naru (Amber Midthunder)—a skilled and resourceful warrior leading the fight against a high-tech predator—leaving her no other choice but to hunt…or be hunted. https://youtu.be/wZ7LytagKlc The following is an interview with Claudia Castello, the Editor of the PREY Bijan Tehrani: How did you start as a film editor and what…

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For Andreas Fontana’s full-length feature debut as a director, Azor, he’s chosen to plunge straight into a time of dirty politics and the dictatorship in 1980 Argentina, where wealth insulates the elite. Talking in-depth with Hamed Sarrafi, the Argentine writer-director says he loves collaborating with friends like co-writer Mariano Llinas and using a mix of seasoned and non-professional actors – and he was pragmatic enough to get Swiss funding and place a Geneva banker at the center of the plot – but he also admits he’s something of a control freak. He deliberately interviewed some of the worst people imaginable…

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Hayedeh Safiyari ( born 1960, Gorgan, Iran) is an Iranian film editor and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She graduated in Art Cinema from School of Television and Cinema, a prestigious film school in Iran and decided to pursue her professional career in film editing. The following is our exclusive interview with Hayedeh Safiyari about working with Asghar Farhadi as editor of majority of his films: https://vimeo.com/726401943 Immediately after graduating from the university, she was recruited in the national TV of Iran. The majority of the edits she has carried out are for internationally…

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 The Shadow on the wall, directed by Mehregan Pezeshki and Arash Kamali Sarvestani, is a surreal journey of an Iranian American artist, who is dealing with sexual trauma in her past. She tries to deal with post trauma through her art. This is a surreal story about an artist who moved from east to west. She is dealing with her memories from the past. Her dreams, memories, conscience and unconscious are all intertwined to each other and it seems impossible to differentiate these worlds from each other. In her story, she is dealing with the multi cultural paradoxes of the…

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When Pomegranates Howl written and directed by Granaz Moussavi tells a story of Hewad, a nine-year-old boy who lives on the streets in the capital of Afghanistan – Kabul. Following the loss of both his father and brother, Hewad decides to create a business by working as a cart pusher, which he enjoys doing every day. By working as such, and loading the carts with goods, he travels throughout Kabul in hope to raise enough money for his family. Hewad’s dream of becoming a movie star comes to live when he stumbles on an Australian photographer. Here is our video…

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In Playground, Belgium’s Oscar Entry in the Shortlist by writer-director Laura Wandel , the everyday reality of grade school is seen from a child’s-eye-view as an obstacle course of degradation and abuse. Following 7-year-old Nora and her big brother Abel, we see Nora struggling to fit in before finding her place on the schoolyard. One day, she notices Abel being bullied by other kids, and though she rushes to protect him by warning their father, Abel forces her to remain silent, while he endures more humiliation and harassment by his peers. Transposing the gritty realism of such filmmakers as Jacques…

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In Compartment No. 6, Finland’s Oscar entry , shortlisted by Academy Awards for the Best International Film Oscar, a young Finnish woman escapes an enigmatic love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the arctic port of Murmansk. Forced to share the long ride and a tiny sleeping car with a Russian miner, the unexpected encounter leads the occupants of compartment no. 6 to face the truth about their own yearning for human connection. To learn more about making of Compartment No. 6 we had an interview with its director Juho Kuosmanen: https://vimeo.com/666612504 JUHO KUOSMANEN (director, co-screenwriter) Juho Kuosmanen…

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Post Mortem is Hungarian Oscar Entry directed by Péter Bergendy. In order to learn more about making of the Post Mortem, we had a video interview with Péter Bergendy, director of the film: https://vimeo.com/658371185 In 1918, towards the end of the First World War, on a battlefield, the German soldier Thomas is left for dead after an artillery explosion, being thrown into the mass grave; however, an older soldier sees him still breathing in the pile of corpses and pulls him out of a flooded trench, where in a semi-conscious state due to the explosion, he had a strange vision:…

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Panama’s Abner Benaim’s sophomore narrative feature Plaza Catedral  is a dramatic thriller featuring actress Ilse Salas (The Good Girls, Güeros, Cantinflas) and Manolo Cardona (Narcos). Newcomer Fernando de Casta, who was chosen from over 250 kids who came in for open casting, is also amongst the principal cast. Benaim’s first narrative feature was the 2009 comedy Chance, but has since become a notable documentarian, with 2018’s Ruben Blades Is Not My Name won the Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival in the 24 Beats Per Second category and was Panama’s submission for the 91st Academy Awards. Plaza Catedral is…

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