We Need to Talk About Oscar

Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson adapt Ursula Wills-Jones’ fable ‘The Wicker Husband,’ a story that already lived as prose and as a London stage production, into the feature ‘Wicker,’ and they name what about it demanded the screen. As writing and directing partners, they compare how their dynamic shifts between the drafting table and a busy set, and how stepping up from their debut ‘Save Yo...

Writer-director Isabella Ivos built ‘None the Wiser’ out of a painful toothache, and she lays out how ideas born from everyday moments like that one survive the journey from notes to script to finished film. Placing the short beside her earlier ‘Robotica,’ where a woman surrenders her humanity to survive, Isabella turns to why the dread of leaving a piece of yourself behind keeps drawing her in, h...

For ‘Powwow People,’ filmmaker Sky Hopinka and his collaborators built the very gathering they filmed, a powwow held over three days at Seattle’s Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center. Sky recalls the first obstacle that made the project feel less like a shoot and more like hosting a community event. Coordinator Gina Bluebird-Stacona anchors the weekend, and he describes how watching her work up cl...

Creator Jesse McKeown built 'Below' around a premise easy to sum up in a sentence, a sea creature terrorizing a small town, and explains how he kept that pitch from overshadowing the family drama and economic unraveling he actually wanted to tell. Having spent years visiting Newfoundland and growing attached to it long before cameras rolled, he talks through the strange task of shooting the place...

Writer-director Thomas Leisten Schneider makes his feature debut with 'Love - Love,' moving from the quick turnaround of commercials and shorts like 'Point and Shoot' into a much longer, more demanding shoot. He reflects on the unexpected challenges of holding onto a singular vision over that extended timeline, and on growing up between France and the US, a background that shaped his outsider's fa...

Writer-director Paula González-Nasser spent years location scouting before making 'The Scout,' her feature debut following Sofia, played by Mimi Davila, through a single frantic workday. Paula reflects on whether scouting for a film about scouting changed her process at all, and whether her professional instincts made her hyper aware of every space she chose for Sofia to enter, or whether she had...

Writer-director Liz Sargent built 'Take Me Home' out of the life she and her sister Anna have lived, expanding her Sundance short into a feature. Liz opens up about what it means for her work to sit so squarely inside her own family, and whether any line can realistically exist between directing a project and living it, between being someone's director and being their sister once the camera rolls....

Writer-director-star Greg Vrotsos shot 'Situations' entirely within Silver Lake, and considers how uncommon it's become for a film to present Los Angeles as itself rather than a stand-in for somewhere else. He also unpacks the space between what he anticipated directing would feel like and what actually filled his days on set, plus whether the experience reshaped opinions he'd carried for years as...

Joe Swanberg sets his first feature in nearly a decade against the vast landscapes of Anchorage, Alaska, a marked departure from the cramped apartments and coffee shops that have long defined relationship dramas. Joe reflects on what it meant to trade those intimate confines for bush planes and sprawling terrain, and how directing on that scale changed his day to day approach behind the camera. Kn...

Orlando von Einsiedel, the Academy Award winning director behind 'The White Helmets' and 'Virunga,' turns to romance with 'The Cycle of Love,' recreating PK Mahanandia's 6,000 mile bicycle journey from Delhi to Sweden. A dedicated London cyclist himself, Orlando reveals whether he pedaled alongside actor Chirag Lobo during production, and considers which strict verité habits he had to let go of on...

Director Jess Zeidman previously wrote 'Tahara' for Olivia Peace to direct, and this time stepped behind the camera herself, working alongside cinematographer Leo Gallagher, who moved up from gaffer on that earlier project to DP here. Jess unpacks what shifted in her instincts now that every creative choice landed on her desk, while Leo identifies which lessons from his prior work translated most...

Writer-director Shatara Michelle Ford and cinematographer Ludovica Isidori reunite for their second feature together following 'Test Pattern,' this time following three queer Black femmes searching for a missing friend across the American Midwest. They reflect on how the shorthand built during their first collaboration carried over or had to be rebuilt entirely once the scale and ambition of this...

Writer-director Andrew Patterson follows his lean, celebrated debut 'The Vast of Night' with a sophomore feature running well past two hours, a substantial jump from his first film's tight runtime. Andrew unpacks how that shift rippled through every stage of making 'The Rivals of Amziah King,' from page to production to post, and what it actually took to earn the budget and creative latitude this...

Writer-director Adam Meeks and cinematographer Stefan Weinberger expanded their 2020 short into 'Union County,' a feature starring Will Poulter and Noah Centineo as brothers Cody and Jack Parsons navigating a court-mandated recovery program in rural Ohio. Adam lays out his intention to counter standard opioid epidemic narratives by centering grace and community support instead, and what kept the f...

Director Stanley Kwan's 1991 film 'Center Stage' returns in a 4K restoration marking its 35th anniversary, revisiting how experimental the biopic was for its time, arriving in Hong Kong as a commercial gamble rather than the awards bait the genre has since become. He recalls whether anyone pushed back against something this unconventional, and considers what it means to watch his younger self on s...

Director Kent Jones joins us to discuss his second narrative feature 'Late Fame,' working from a script by Samy Burch, who appeared on this show around the time of 'May December.' Kent reflects on collaborating with a writer defining a different generational moment in the industry, and what that pairing revealed about where their worldviews aligned or pushed against each other. We unpack the decis...

Writer-director Lucía Aleñar Iglesias made her feature debut with 'Forastera' in a place that belongs more to her past than her present, returning to Mallorca and the world of her father's family after years spent in States. Lucía considers whether that distance sharpened her perspective or left her questioning her authority to tell this story, and how English entered the mix alongside Catalan and...

We are joined by writer-director Elliot Tuttle and actors Reed Birney and Kieron Moore to discuss 'Blue Film,' a chamber drama that faced rejection from multiple festivals before finding distribution with Obscured Releasing. Elliot reflects on what kept him determined to make the film without compromising the story despite knowing most festivals wouldn't program it, while Reed and Kieron share whe...

Director Nicole Bazuin's 'Modern Whore' began as a 2018 illustrated memoir collaboration with Andrea Werhun, evolved through multiple shorts including one that premiered at SXSW in 2020, and now arrives as a feature documentary that's traveled from TIFF to theatrical release. Nicole reflects on how over a decade of friendship and creative partnership shaped what the film ultimately became. The hyb...

Alexandra Brodski directs 'Half Man,' Richard Gadd's first fully fictional series following 'Baby Reindeer.' Alexandra reflects on how the project found her and at what point in reading the scripts she knew she wanted to be the one to direct it. For the first time in her television career, she was there from the beginning, building the tone rather than inheriting one from episodes she didn't shoot...

Writer-director Madison Young adapts her memoir 'Daddy' into 'By the Roots,' her feature directorial debut. Madison traces the adaptation process and the stages the script went through in transforming such deeply personal material into cinema. We explore the casting process, from how much Madison overthought who would play her to the challenge of putting different stages of her life on screen toge...

Canadian filmmaker Chandler Levack follows up her critically acclaimed debut 'I Like Movies,' with not one but two films releasing on the same day: 'Mile End Kicks,' her most personal work yet, and 'Roommates,' her first time directing someone else's script for Netflix. She reflects on whether there's a recognizable signature that shows up in both regardless of whose story she's telling or what th...

‘Bunnylovr’ is out in theaters today. Premiering at Sundance in January 2025 as part of the US Dramatic Competition, writer-director-star Katarina Zhu’s debut feature follows Becca, a Chinese-American cam girl in New York navigating a toxic relationship with a mysterious client while quietly trying to reconnect with her estranged, dying father. This is our conversation with Katarina and her cinema...

Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher, the comedy duo known as BriTANicK, brought two feature films to SXSW 2026: 'Pizza Movie,' which they wrote and directed, and 'Over Your Dead Body,' which they adapted for Jorma Taccone to direct. They reflect on their sketch comedy roots and whether anything they'd done before approached narrative filmmaking, plus how they regard sketches within the broader realm o...

Writer-director-star Matthew Shear took home the SXSW Audience Award for 'Fantasy Life,' with Amanda Peet earning a Special Jury Award for her performance. Matthew reflects on what this double recognition means for a film drawn so directly from his own experience, and whether the script could have been directed by anyone else given how personal it is. Drawing on his acting background with director...