Few veteran filmmakers have had a more sudden ascent to acclaim than Joanna Hogg. Most would have come to have known her through her magnificent The Souvenir duology, which won her many new admirers. For those with an ear to the ground in terms of British independent cinema, she would be familiar as the director…

When Tod Browning set out to make Freaks in 1932, he inadvertently started a grassroots movement that would rapidly grow amongst the underground filmmakers that dominated throughout most of the previous century since that revolutionary film started – finally, one didn’t need to fit into the confines of the studio system to be considered an…

Looking at the genesis of any director’s career is always a fascinating endeavour, particularly when dealing with those that you admire – seeing their roots presented in the form of their early work helps us critically judge their evolution as artists, and show their journey to becoming compelling storytellers. Jim Jarmusch is one of the…

Every young filmmaker yearns to get the financing to make their feature directorial debut, and the current cinematic landscape, where many studios and independent financiers are giving these burgeoning talents the resources to realize their dreams, it is easier than ever. It’s rare that the results are anything less than utterly impressive, and many of…

By now, it’s almost undeniable public knowledge that Josephine Decker is a very gifted filmmaker. She has only made a handful of films, but each one of them is well-formed and fascinating, and works of incredible poignancy by a truly talented artist. She has recently started making her way into more high-profile circles, working with…

We recently lost the extremely talented Robert Downey, Sr., which evoked a wealth of conversations surrounding his importance to the world of cinema, as made very clear by the legions of people who remarked on his brilliance as one of the formative voices in American independent cinema, which would not have been the cherished institution…

Like most of the world, my first encounter with Bo Burnham was through his comedy specials, where he was essentially just a charming young comedian in his early twenties, playing the keyboard and reciting a variety of peculiar songs, interspersed with hilarious anecdotes that fit his particular brand of humour. These very very funny, and…

“What is Hollywood by Babylon and sunshine?” At some point in the 1960s, revolutionary filmmaker Agnès Varda spent some time in Los Angeles (and a few other parts of America, mostly settling on the West Coast), directing a variety of narrative and documentary films, some of which stand as her best work, and her most…

There are some artists who inspire excitement and endless anticipation when they announce a new project, regardless of what it may be. Pedro Almodóvar has been the gold standard for European filmmaking (and essentially the entire arthouse as a whole) for most of his career, which reached a crescendo in the 1990s, when he was…

In an incredibly prolific career, Robert Altman proved himself to be quite a formidable filmmaker, being one of the few artists who successfully mastered both the art of producing quality and quantity, which is quite an elusive concept that not many people are able to stake a legitimate claim towards. It meant that, despite making…