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Illustrations by Stephanie Lane Gage.When making my sound work, I always try to bend the material in front of me to find alternative possibilities of context or (re)context. Here, I was drawn to so many personal favorites, moods, and textures that these 70-odd minutes are more akin to a year-end work of catharsis. The result is as much a personal mix as a 2024 roundup.This was aided by a number of films with great music supervision, particularly four heavy hitters: Love Lies Bleeding (all films 2024), Civil War, Dahomey, and Janet Planet. Artists like Throbbing Gristle, Anna Domino, Silver Apples, Suicide, Dean Blunt, and Laurie Anderson offered a huge prop of character within these films. They could set each film in a specific time and place, or, in the case of Civil War, give a punk, psychedelic energy to a near-future world.Staying through the end credits is important...

With new films added daily and a handpicked collection, Mubi is perfect for viewers who want a deeper connection to cinema.

About a month ago I stumbled on a movie store (remember those) just down the street from my house that rents Blu-rays and DVDs. It was like walking into the past in the best possible way. The walls are littered with thousands of carefully curated indie film titles categorized first by genre or country, and then by director or actor. I spent half an hour just bouncing from wall to wall, checking out the titles. The store was even complete with a knowledgeable film buff behind the counter to help me out. If you miss that experience, I have a streamer for you: Mubi – the best streamer for independent film and arthouse movie enthusiasts. Here’s why…

7-Day Free Trial $14.99+ / month via amazon.com Everything you need to know about Mubi

What is Mubi?...

Zia Anger first endeavored to make a film years ago, shooting a project titled Always All Ways, Anne Marie on a shoestring budget with friends. However, this debut feature was never completed. In My First Film, Anger revisits that unfinished work and creative period through a uniquely experimental lens.

Playing with fiction and nonfiction, the movie incorporates reenactments starring Odessa Young as Vita, a stand-in for Anger. Through Vita’s experiences directing that long-ago production and subsequent reflections, My First Film offers an artfully unflinching perspective on the difficulties of being a young female filmmaker.

By blending scenes from her actual first shoot with new material, Anger layers intimate retrospection over dynamic recreations. We watch as Vita navigates a chaotic set, dealing with inexperience, interpersonal frictions, and her own growing pains.

Between location sequences, her voiceover analyzes past decisions and outcomes with candid wisdom. Flashing between time periods, Anger crafts...

Paul Schrader is the latest “Joker: Folie à Deux” critic.

The auteur seemingly couldn’t find any semblance of his “Taxi Driver” or Martin Scorsese’s “King of Comedy” in “Joker: Folie à Deux,” despite director Todd Phillips saying both inspired the Oscar-winning first film, 2019’s “Joker.” Frequent Schrader collaborator Scorsese also executive produced “Joker” but did not return for the sequel.

Schrader told Interview magazine, while in discussion with Jeremy O. Harris, that he couldn’t even sit in the theater for “Folie à Deux” past a (non-consecutive) 25 minutes.

“I see who’s coming up. I go to the multiplex,” Schrader said of his pastimes when not writing and directing. “I saw ‘Joker: Folie à Deux.’ I saw about 10 or 15 minutes of it. I left, bought something, came back, saw another 10 minutes. That was enough.”

He added that “Folie à Deux” is a “really bad musical.”

In fact, Schrader...

My First Film is now showing exclusively on Mubi. For more on Anger's film, go behind the scenes with an exclusive featurette. My First Film.Between 2010 and 2012, Zia Anger directed a feature film titled Always All Ways, Anne Marie in her hometown of Ithaca, New York. She cast her friend Deana LeBlanc as a surrogate for herself, and her actual father as the father. The semi-fantastical, semi-autobiographical film had a beleaguered production—rife with Adderall, an unwanted pregnancy, near-fatal accidents, and imploding friendships. It was never screened or distributed, but Anger has long bore its scars. Anger’s work has always been sharply self-critical and self-reflexive, and you can see commentary on the industry-perceived “failure” of making Always All Ways seep into her subsequent films, such as her polemical 2015 short My Last Film, which envisions a career-suicide note delivered via the film festival submission website Withoutabox. In 2018, frustrated by...

In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week: the music videos from Zia Anger. What's in a name? Just like the emotion that is her last name, Zia Anger's music video protagonists seem on the edge of exploding. On the verge of bursting their emotion out in the open. It seems curious that Anger herself only recently made her first feature film, aptly named My First Film, as she herself has been taking a long build-up to the Big Explosion that is a first feature. It is only fitting that all her music videos to date seem like little bursts of energy. There was a reason why Anger, for the longest time, seemed your...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Odessa Young is only 26, but she already has a truly impressive body of work behind her. Assassination Nation, A Million Little Pieces, Shirley, Mothering Sunday, The Stand, The Staircase, Manodrome, in each of these projects, she seems to have an effortless command over her character, each unique, never forced, always true. Now she stars as Vita, the lead character based on Zia Anger in My First Film. On this episode, she talks about the need to “cultivate an obsession” as character preparation, recent musings on “how much an actor should act to the camera,” why she never worries about […]

The post “The Process Was More Important Than the Result”: My First Film Star Odessa Young, Back To One, Episode 308 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Odessa Young is only 26, but she already has a truly impressive body of work behind her. Assassination Nation, A Million Little Pieces, Shirley, Mothering Sunday, The Stand, The Staircase, Manodrome, in each of these projects, she seems to have an effortless command over her character, each unique, never forced, always true. Now she stars as Vita, the lead character based on Zia Anger in My First Film. On this episode, she talks about the need to “cultivate an obsession” as character preparation, recent musings on “how much an actor should act to the camera,” why she never worries about […]

The post “The Process Was More Important Than the Result”: My First Film Star Odessa Young, Back To One, Episode 308 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Odessa Young knew right away she wanted to be a part of “My First Film,” director Zia Anger’s retelling about her first feature, 2010’s “Always All Ways, Anne Marie,” failing to be accepted to any film festivals.

Young plays a fictionalized Anger named Vita. The movie follows Vita making a scrappy independent film in her hometown, and her unraveling as she has to cope with a burdensome boyfriend who wants them to become first-time parents.

Young was first introduced to “My First Film” when Anger toured the story as a performance art piece. “I received an email from [producer] Taylor Shung and there was a script and a very nice letter rom Zia,” Young tells me. “I was already in it at that point because I’d been hearing whispers of the project and that they were interested in me so I was really excited about it.”

A week or two later,...

There has never been a movie like Zia Anger’s My First Film, which premiered at Cph Dox - although it is primarily a hybrid, leaning towards fiction - and which has just landed on Mubi after a tour of festivals. But is it a good thing? Many critics seem to be quite enthusiastic about it…

Its title pretty much answers the question of what it is about, but there is a bit of history to be dealt with here. Namely, Anger’s intended feature debut Always All Ways, Anne Marie was a very difficult production on the verge of being considered “haunted”, and, after it was finally finished, it failed to secure a festival premiere and any form of distribution. The filmmaker went on with her career, directing music videos and shorts. At one point she also converted her experiences with her haunted first film into a live performance piece.

Zia Anger’s My First Film blends documentary and feature style to create a personal visual essay about the exhausting yet exhilarating process of making a film. Anger’s first film, “Always All Ways, Anne Marie,” was rejected by over fifty film festivals. She then went on to create an interactive screenlife film, and the influence of the interactive style is visible in her recent work. It is difficult to say when Anger’s personal life ends and where Vita, the protagonist’s fictional life begins, and that is perhaps why we are repeatedly told that it is a true story—well, not entirely. Vita, a twenty-five-year-old passionate young director, travels to her hometown to shoot her first film with her friends and family. When you have watched hundreds of films, it is a challenge to find your own voice. Even if not consciously done, you end up borrowing styles from your favorite directors.

If you’ve already dived into our massive fall movie preview, then you have a strong sense of what to have on your radar over the next four months. Now let’s examine September a little closer, already including a few new additions since our fall preview went up. Of course, from Venice to TIFF to NYFF, much of the month will be dedicated to our festival coverage, which you can follow here.

12. The Featherweight (Robert Kolodny; Sept. 20)

With the never-ending glut of biopics, particularly those centered in the world of sports, it can often feel like there’s not much new territory to cover. While Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw recently showed how a singular vision can elevate the genre, another film taking place partially inside the ring breathes new life. Robert Kolodny, who worked on the cinematography team of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and Procession,...

Filmmaker Zia Anger takes an innovative approach to exploring her artistic journey in the new movie “My First Film.” Rather than telling a straightforward narrative, the film blends behind-the-scenes footage, fictional scenes, and commentary to examine Anger’s experience making her debut feature over a decade ago. Starring Odessa Young as a character named Vita who represents Anger, the movie follows Vita’s struggles completing her movie amid personal and work challenges.

At its core, the film focuses on Anger’s unsuccessful first movie from long ago. That project never found success on the festival circuit. Now, Anger looks back on that time and her emotions through “My First Film.” She combines memories with new material to chronicle the messy process of creation. Young immerses herself in the role of Vita, blurring the line between acting and channeling real feelings.

Anger wanted to create a unique tapestry showing the experience of art-making.

On a Zoom with writer/director Zia Anger and actor Odessa Young to chat their new film, “My First Film,” the lovefest that exists between the two is immediately clear.

The amount of respect and admiration between the filmmaking and star is palpable as they talk about undertaking Anger’s “My First Film,” based on her 2019 multimedia art project of the same name, which was itself about her lost film “Always All Ways, Annie Marie.” Young plays Vita, a filmmaker who looks back at making her movie — about a woman played by her friend Dina (Devon Ross) — who gets pregnant and decides to leave home. It also looks at Vita’s own history with her queer parents and extraordinary conception story, as she was raised by two mothers and a gay father, who brought over his sperm during a blizzard for Anger’s mothers to use to conceive her. “My First Film,...

Summer’s over. Looks like it’s time to get back to work. And by work, we mean some serious movie watching. Luckily September doesn’t disappoint. We have everything from the highly-anticipated Megaopolis, the self-funded opus from Francis Ford Coppola, to the star-studded Netflix affair His Three Daughters, to the return of the king of tight, gnarly thrillers, Jeremy Saulnier, with his new one, Rebel Ridge. Oh, and a doc about psychics from a Fast-Track alum, with Lana Wilson’s Look Into My Eyes. Looks like the fall is shaping up to be quite the movie season. Now get out there and start watching!

A Different Man

When You Can Watch: September 20

Where You Can Watch: Theaters (Limited)

Director: Aaron Schimberg

Cast: Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, Adam Pearson

Why We’re Excited: Yet another selection in this month’s Film Independent Presents series, writer-director Schimberg’s latest offering is...

Slippery and unsubtle, Zia Anger’s film about a film-maker is saved from self-indulgence by its sly humour

Rising star Odessa Young brings just the right amount of spontaneity, youthful exuberance and charisma to keep this hyperdimensional little ouroboros of a story about the actual director’s film-making experiences from seeming insufferably self-indulgent. So credit should also go to director Zia Anger herself for decent helming and casting instincts, because it all sort of works, even if it feels like a grad school project gone rogue.

Young plays Vita, a young woman who wants to make a movie that is more or less about herself, even though in her voiceover she keeps foregrounding the differences between her real story and the fiction she is creating. “Real” Vita has two mothers, a couple who conceived Vita with the help of a gay male friend; also, as an adult, Vita has had two abortions.

All movies are made by people, but few feel as guided by the hand of fate as Zia Anger’s My First Film. A certain subset of plugged-in cinephiles might recognize the name of the project from its many years as a performance piece, starting in 2018 at Brooklyn’s Spectacle Theater before going on tour and eventually evolving to be a shared online experience during the pandemic. Using the footage from her would-be directorial debut, Always All Ways, Anne Marie, which IMDb declared “abandoned,” Anger constructed an interactive screenlife film that interrogated her fraught relationship with the material.

This initial iteration of My First Film channeled Anger’s frustration with the filmmaking and festival ecosystems into something that could establish a more honest connection with an audience. With her back to the audience and a TextEdit document open alongside QuickTime files of her aborted freshman feature, Anger provided an unflinching...

Zia Anger’s name has not broken into the mainstream; it’s instead been a kind of totem for underground film artistry, to whatever extent that even exists anymore. Her presentation-based My First Film earned traction as the ultimate vision / confession of artistic failure and regret, making somewhat peculiar the existence of My First Film, a feature debut-of-sorts that details her younger self’s failure to launch a filmmaking career. Or someone like her: the lead character is Vita, a shortsighted and temperamental young director failing to control cast, crew, ideas, or impulses; but present in the film, too, is Zia, who reflects on this difficult time in the character’s (her?) life.

Fear not any risk of complication. Conceptually fluid and nimbly assembled, My First Film makes legible––dare I say universal?––thwarted dreams and personal embarrassment vis-à-vis its interplay of Anger’s actual work and Vita’s staged endeavors.

With the summer movie season now quietly winding down, fall is upon us. As we do each year, after highlighting the best films offered thus far, we’ve set out to provide an overview of the titles that should be on your radar.

Featuring 40 films, the below preview includes both the best we’ve already seen (with full reviews where available) and the anticipated with (mostly) confirmed release dates over the next four months. A good amount will premiere these next few weeks at Telluride, Venice, TIFF, and NYFF, so check back for our reviews. Dates below are theatrical releases unless otherwise noted.

For more, explore our 20 most-anticipated films premiering at fall festivals that currently don’t have a fall release date confirmed.

Rebel Ridge (Jeremy Saulnier; Sept. 6 on Netflix)

A ruthlessly efficient thriller fueled by boiling rage, Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge wastes no time setting the stakes. Terry Richmond...

Mubi is exactly the service for people who see Mysteries of Lisbon is streaming and ask “yes but what version?” Accordingly I’m excited that September brings the extended, miniseries cut of Raúl Ruiz’s late-career triumph, which arrives alongside the notable new release that is Zia Anger’s My First Film––here programmed in a “Millennial Meltdown” series alongside Sebastián Silva’s Rotting in the Sun and Martine Syms’s The African Desperate. Take special note of Marie-Claude Trielhou’s Simone Barbés, or Virtue, which has captured cinephile attention since its restoration, probably because it’s a great film that encapsulates so much of what you’d even want in a movie.

Meanwhile, Tarsem’s 4K restoration (and slightly adjusted cut) of 2006’s The Fall makes its streaming premiere; there’s opportunity to catch up with Coralie Fargeat ahead of The Substance; recent releases Riddle of Fire and Geoff...

A self-reflexive origin story about creation, growth, and the myth of the lone artist, “My First Film” announces a bold, disruptive new talent in American cinema. But if the film’s release is anything like Zia Anger’s experience in the film world thus far, it will elicit a maddening whimper where it should have made a bang.

That’s because Anger, who writes and directs with fierce emotion and sincerity, has had terrible luck (if you want to call it that) on the film scene. Despite directing evocative music videos for artists like Mitski and Angel Olsen, Anger has been consistently overlooked by Hollywood, and has struggled to secure financing. Her first feature, shot on a shoestring budget with support from family and friends, was rejected from every film festival.

A caveat: even Anger looks back on that first film as “bad.” At least she implies as much in “My First Film,...

Wassup and welcome to IndieWire’s 2000’s Week, our annual summer-time celebration of whichever decade we’re thinking on most fondly this particular season. As we’ve previously done with both the ’80s (rad) and the ’90s (the shiznit), we’re spending this stretch of the dog days of summer looking back on some recent history. Some very recent history, in this case.

Like those previous iterations, this celebration of the best of the early aughts’ cinematic output will kick off with our ranked mega-list of the decade’s 100 greatest films, which we will then follow with interviews with the people who made them, essays about the impact these contemporary classics had on the world at large, close listens of the scores and needle-drops that still reverberate in our ears, and so very much more.

As we’re fond of saying around these parts, if you’re worried about the...

Returning for its seventh edition this year, the 2024 Rockaway Film Festival kicks off next weekend, taking place August 17-25 and featuring a rich lineup of cinematic and artistic events. Highlights include Zia Anger’s My First Film, featuring a Q&a with star Odessa Young and post-screening DJ set by Andrew Vanwyngarden of Mgmt; the East Coast premiere of Ed Lachman’s new restoration of Report From Hollywood, his account on the set of Wim Wenders’ The State of Things, featuring a Q&a with Lachman and Sean Price Williams; a 50th anniversary screening of Wenders’ Alice in the Cities; a rare screening of Agnes Martin’s Gabriel with a live score; and much more. Ahead of the festival, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the trailer.

“Every year, our program emerges intuitively,” said co-founders Courtney Muller and Sam Fleischner, “we choose films in consideration of the setting in which we’ll show them,...

What’s the worst that could happen making a movie for the first time? In “My First Film,” Zia Anger‘s directorial debut, it’s any number of “firsts” and the fears that come with them. Oh, and an unexpected pregnancy; that’s an easy way for things to spiral out of control.

Read More: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2024

Fresh off its world premiere at Cph:dox earlier this year, Anger’s debut stars Odessa Young as Vita, who sets out to make her first movie with a crew of friends, funded by crowdsourcing.

Continue reading ‘My First Film’ Trailer: Zia Anger’s Feature Debut Hits Theaters On August 30, Streams On Mubi On September 6 at The Playlist.

"Did you know that most filmmakers spend their entire lives making some version of the same movie? And I wonder... are they this alone?" Mubi has unveiled a trailer for My First Film, a hybrid documentary-narrative feature film made by Zia Anger. It's an autobiographical look at attempting to be a filmmaker, and the trials & tribulations of making movies, especially while young. It premiered at the 2024 Cph:dox Film Festival earlier this year, and it's set for a streaming releasing on Mubi this fall. A young filmmaker, Vita, revisits her first chaotic attempt at filmmaking 15 years prior. Making a semi-autobiographical film starring her friend Dina, Vita's eager but inexperienced approach causes the production to spiral into chaos, leading to significant disruptions and a near-fatal accident. "Fact bleeding into fiction, and past, present, and future converging to create a modern myth that redefines the very act of creation." Starring Odessa Young and Devon Ross,...

Zia Anger is haunted by a long-abandoned film project in her feature directorial debut “My First Film.” A filmmaker, performance artist, and celebrated director of music videos for the likes of Beach House, Angel Olsen, Mitski, and Zola Jesus, Anger fuses ideas from that unrealized project with echoes of a touring stage piece she started in 2018 for this Mubi release, out at the end of August. Odessa Young stands in for Anger as the young filmmaker Vita, who 15 years before started making a film about a young woman adrift after becoming pregnant. IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer for the film below.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Vita (Odessa Young) revisits her first chaotic attempt at filmmaking — a semi-autobiographical feature made 15 years prior about a young woman who decides to leave home after becoming pregnant. Blending past with present, reality with fiction, Zia Anger’s ‘debut’ film navigates the tumultuous intersection...

Now in its seventh year at the beachy southern edge of Queens, the Rockaway Film Festival has revealed its 2024 lineup, which IndieWire shares exclusively. The festival runs August 17-25, 2024 and features outdoor screenings and conversations at the Rff’s regular yearlong venue, the Arverne Cinema.

This year’s highlights include Jamil McGinnis and Pat Heywood’s looping, multi-screen installation “Waking Up (For the First Time),” a tribute to experimental animator Faith Hubley, with live music performances and DJ sets featuring members of indie bands Animal Collective and Mgmt.

Special events include bio-art and stop-motion animated workshops, children’s cinema, the U.S. premiere of “The Future Perfect” director Nele Wohlatz’s comedy of misunderstandings “Sleep with Your Eyes Open,” the New York premiere of Juan Palacios and Sofie Husum Johannesen’s “As the Tide Comes In,” plus the world premieres of Corey Hughes’ “Your Final Meditation” and Sam Fleischner’s “Jetty.

Art house distributor and streamer Mubi and the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland are partnering to offer a new prize at the film festival given to first-time filmmakers.

The Mubi Award — Debut Feature will be awarded to an outstanding debut feature playing in Locarno’s official program, and the award intends to celebrate “boldly distinctive visions for storytelling and the aesthetic possibilities of the medium, spotlighting the new films that will shape the future of cinema,” according to a statement from the festival.

The Locarno Film Festival is now in its 77th year and this year runs between August 7-17. The festival’s First Feature jury will award the prize, and this year the jury includes Moroccan director-producer Khalil Benkirane (Doha Film Institute), Finnish actor Alma Pöysti, who starred in Aki Kaurismäki’s film “Fallen Leaves” that Mubi released last year, and make-up designer Esmé Sciaroni, who worked on Alice Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera.

The Locarno Film Festival is partnering with Mubi on an award for first-time directors.

The Mubi award – debut feature is a cross-section prize given to a first-time director showing their film as a world or international premiere in the festival’s official selection.

The prize is worth 10,000 Swiss Francs to be shared equally between the director and the producer, given to an outstanding debut in the official programme.

The award will be given by the Locarno Film Festival’s first feature jury, composed of Moroccan director-producer Khalil Benkirane of the Doha Film Institute, Finnish actor Alma Pöysti who starred in...

The Hudson Film Festival, now in its second year in the quaint upstate New York town, has revealed the lineup for its 2024 edition.

IndieWire exclusively announces Hudson’s program for its second year, running August 9-11, with all-access passes now on sale. Programming includes opening night feature “The Supremes At Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” (Searchlight Pictures on Hulu), Sundance award-winning documentary “Daughters” (Netflix), “My First Film” (Mubi) from Zia Anger, Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary “A New Kind of Wilderness,” a 15th-anniversary free screening of Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” and Cannes award-winner “The Taste of Things” as an international spotlight feature.

Based on the 2013 New York Times bestselling novel, writer/director Tina Mabry’s “The Supremes At Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” stars Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Emmy nominee Sanaa Lathan, and Emmy winner Uzo Aduba as three women whose friendship withstands the test of time through the decades dating back to the 1960s.

Nestled in our list of most-anticipated 2024 premieres was Zia Anger’s My First Film, a spin on / expansion of / who-can-say from her much-lauded shorts My First Film (2015) and My Last Film (2019). Ahead of the feature’s theatrical release from Mubi, there’s a first teaser in which Anger direct-addresses us, the prospective viewer, on a film “[about] the first one (and other stuff).” Mixing vertical footage familiar to anyone on social media with sequences more abundant in production value (featuring Odessa Young and Devon Ross), it helps us understand what she’s intending… to some degree.

As Frank Falisi said in our 2024 preview, “How to anticipate something you’re not sure of? Is the word always ‘anxiety’? What room exists for the unknown to be experienced without ever being known, to feel something like ‘good,’ even when prodding the failure to be known? Or: if you’ve made My First Film...

Cph:dox, one Europe’s leading documentary film festivals, has announced its full program, which includes no fewer than 84 world premieres out of more than 200 films being screened in the Danish capital and nationwide from March 13 through March 24.

This 21st edition, which aims to make documentary film accessible not only to a select industry few but to the public at large, will take off with a new nationwide approach, with mini festivals running simultaneously in nearly half of Denmark’s municipalities. In addition, alongside the six main awards, a new Audience Award is being revived by popular request, which comes with a €5,000 prize.

Running alongside the festival’s overarching theme of “Body Politics,” which explores questions about the body and our understanding of it, organizers have announced the other main theme of this edition: “Conflicted.”

Born from the war in Gaza, which has hit the headlines again since Oct. 7 last year,...

Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (Cph:Dox) has unveiled the line-ups for its five competitive sections for its 2024 edition. All films in the main Dox:Award competition are world premieres for the second successive year.

Scroll down for the full list of competition titles

Titles in that section include Alessandra Celesia’s The Flats, a France-uk-Ireland-Belgium co-production about Belfast youngsters accessing their memories of the Troubles. Belfast-based Italian filmmaker Celesia has previously made documentaries including 2017’s Anatomy Of A Miracle, which played at Locarno.

The 12-strong Dox:Award competition also includes Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter’s UK title Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other,...

Music video director and a Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Intensive participant, we thought Zia Anger‘s avant-garde feature debut (or is it a sophomore film?) might drop this year, but Park City might actually be the best lieu to unpack a title that has closer ties with Utah. At first a film with its own if a tree falls in a forest mythology and then the birthing of a live cinema performance piece would equate to the production of My First Film. Filming took place late last year in Salt Lake City, with Odessa Young in the lead role — and cinematographer Ashley Connor behind the line.…...

The list of directors who put their trust in Robby Müller could constitute a nice history of post-war cinema. A retrospective of films on which he served as Dp reflects accordingly––so’s the case with Metrograph’s “Robby Müller: Remain in Light,” which starts on Friday, September 29, and for which we’re glad to debut the trailer.

Contained therein are bits and pieces of what Metrograph attendees can anticipate. The series will offer a chance to see (among others) 24 Hour Party People, Alice in the Cities, The American Friend, Barfly, Breaking the Waves, Dead Man, Down by Law, Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, Kings of the Road, Korczak, Living the Light – Robby Müller, Mystery Train, Repo Man, Saint Jack, To Live and Die in L.A., When Pigs Fly, The Wrong Move, and Paris, Texas. The opening night will be anchored by “a panel on Müller’s continued influence on filmmaking,...

First look at the feature, directed by Chris Andrews, revealed.

Bafta-winner Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott have been revealed as the stars of Bring Them Down, which is in the final stages of filming in Ireland for Mubi Production.

Paul Mescal and Tom Burke were previously attached to the project, which marks the feature debut of writer/director Chris Andrews, a Screen Star of Tomorrow in 2019. A first look at the film can be seen above.

The film also stars Colm Meaney, Nora-Jane Noone, Paul Ready and Susan Lynch.

Abbott plays Michael, the last son of a shepherding family who lives with his ailing father,...

Exclusive: Mubi has recently wrapped production on Zia Anger’s feature film debut, My First Film, starring Odessa Young and Devon Ross.

The film is an adaptation of Anger’s critically acclaimed live cinema performance piece of the same name.

Related Story Park Chan-wook On How A Language Barrier Became "Central Element" Of His Film – Contenders L.A. Related Story Mubi Founder Efe Çakarel Talks Strategy Behind 'Decision To Leave' Acquisition – Toronto Industry Talk Related Story Canadian Director Patricia Rozema's Early Films Enjoy Revival As Kino Lorber, Mubi Take Rights To 4K Restorations

The movie is a deeply personal examination of cinema, body, truth and storytelling, centering on a young filmmaker (Odessa Young) as she recounts the story of struggling to make her first feature. Fact bleeds into fiction, and the past, present, and future converge to create a modern myth that redefines and expands the very act of creation.

New York City and L.A.-based indie distributor 1091 Pictures, known for such hit releases as Taika Waititi’s “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” Spirit Awards winner “Christine” and knockout comedy “The Overnight,” has swooped in on rights to all English-speaking territories for psychedelic thriller “To the Moon.” The drama, sold by Yellow Veil Pictures, marks the directorial debut of actor Scott Friend (“The Dark End of the Street”), who also wrote the pic and plays a lead role in it.

The movie, which is debuting its first poster in Variety, premiered last year at the online film festival Nightstream, and was in selection at the 2020 U.S. in Progress industry showcase organized by Wroclaw’s American Film Festival, which later hosted the pic’s international premiere.

“To the Moon” is a twist on the unwanted-house-guest trope. It follows a young couple, played by Friend and Madeleine Morgenweck, who find...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)Visual FX pioneer Douglas Trumbull has died at the age of 79. Among Trumbull's many achievements are his VFX contributions to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (which Trumbull worked on at the age of 25), Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and Terrence Malick's Tree of Life. In a 2012 interview with the New York Times, Trumbull described his ongoing experiments with new technology and his belief that "if you want to get people to go out to the movies, to pay a premium price for some kind of premium experience, it better be damned premium. It better be extraordinary.”With this year's Oscar nominations, Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car becomes the first Japanese film to be nominated for Best Picture.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Memoria (2021)Distributor Neon has announced its release plans for Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria: Playing only in theaters, Memoria will be “moving from city to city, theater to theater, week by week, playing in front of only one solitary audience at any given time.”Tilda Swinton and George Mackay will be starring in the next film by Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence). Titled The End, the film has been described as a "a Golden Age musical about the last human family." Co-programmed by James Hansen & Eric Souther, Light Matter Festival is a new "moving-image art festival dedicated to experimental film and media arts." Taking place in Alfred, New York, the festival will be screening films by Simon Liu, Mary Helena Clark, Lynne Sachs, and more. Sylvester Stallone's...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Lynn Shelton by Fred HayesFilmmaker Lynn Shelton, best known as a pioneer of the mumblecore movement and as a gifted director of television (including the series Glow and Little Fires Everywhere), has died at the age of 54.Luca Guadagnino is set to direct a reboot of Scarface, with a shooting script written by Ethan and Joel Coen that places the story in Los Angeles. Recommended VIEWINGThe official U.S. trailer for Abel Ferrara's Tommaso, which will be arriving to virtual cinemas starting June 5. The film follows Willem Dafoe as an American artist in Rome. Read our interview with Ferrara regarding the film as "personal cinema" here.Netflix has released a trailer for Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods, the story of four African-American Vietnam war veterans who return to Vietnam in search of...

"Tonight is going to be antithetical to traditional methods of moving image distribution." At around 00:00 GMT on March 27th, artist Zia Anger begins her staggering, shrewd, and somehow still surprising performance My First Film with this ambitious agenda. By the performance’s end, about two hours later, Anger has more than achieved her aim—imagining and realizing a creative, conceptual work that is not contrarian but utopian, a statement that is forceful and immutable, yet intimate, something exceptionally clear-eyed, and as ever with Anger, characteristically noncompliant.Though there is always an evident, and ontologically inherent variability and singularity to live performance, My First Film has, since 2018, more or less existed established in its one original form. Described by the artist as an “expanded cinema performance,” My First Film meshes Anger’s unseen, undistributed first feature Always All Ways, Anne Marie (formerly known as Gray) with live on-screen commentary, giving...

After nearly two years of performing My First Film live in theaters, Zia Anger has reconfigured her piece for livestreaming. Currently being streamed to small groups in preview mode, each performance is announced on Anger’s Twitter the morning of; capacity is small and quickly filled on a first come, first served email RSVP basis. The middle core of the show—Anger’s story about her never-premiered first feature, told via a mix of video footage and select online browsing, narrated via TextEdit narration typed out in real time—has remained essentially the same. The beginning and ending have been necessarily rethought: where a key […]...

After nearly two years of performing My First Film live in theaters, Zia Anger has reconfigured her piece for livestreaming. Currently being streamed to small groups in preview mode, each performance is announced on Anger’s Twitter the morning of; capacity is small and quickly filled on a first come, first served email RSVP basis. The middle core of the show—Anger’s story about her never-premiered first feature, told via a mix of video footage and select online browsing, narrated via TextEdit narration typed out in real time—has remained essentially the same. The beginning and ending have been necessarily rethought: where a key […]...

Party time at the Glasgow Short Film Festival

In its first year as a charitable organisation, the Glasgow Short Film Festival is to focus on the politics of place, it was announced today. The festival, which includes over 180 films screening in a variety of venues between 18 and 22 March, will showcase alternative perspectives on the Troubles in Northern Ireland and a strand looking at the ways black communities and artists relate to landscape and geography.

"We’re also proud to present some of the best new Scottish short films, as well as a fantastic selection of fresh work from around the world, with 23 countries represented in our International competition," said festival co-director Sanne Jehoul.

Guests will include international filmmakers Zia Anger, Marie Loisier and Sorayos Prapapan, and cult electronic musician Felix Kubin, with the Scottish première of Anger's My First Film to open the festival. There will be a special focus on the work of [film.

Zia Anger in My First Film

This year's Glasgow Short Film Festival is to open with the Scottish première of Zia Anger's My First Film, it was revealed yesterday - and attendees are being asked to keep their phones switched on as the director introduces and interacts with her work. Music video guru and performance artist Anger will tell the story of an abandoned first feature and the experiences of female filmmakers through the big screen, live YouTube windows and sequences sent directly to the phones of audience members.

The festival has also announced a screening of Marie Losier's Felix In Wonderland, an experimental voyage through the work of cult electronic musician Felix Kubin, which will be followed by a rare musical performajnce from the star himself, supported by local R&b-disco-house-dreampop band Babe.

The festival will run from 18-22 March and the full programme will be announced on 13 February.

Jenny Hval explores the meaning of motherhood in the surreal new video for “Accident.” The track is the third single off Hval’s upcoming LP The Practice of Love, out September 13th via Sacred Bones Records.

Directed by Hval’s longtime collaborator Zia Anger, the video stars Anger’s mother Barbara acting out the lyrics to the song. “Once she was a mystery of life,” Hval sings. “Now she is skyping with her friend/They are both childless/It rings a hollow tone: childless…she found stretch mark cream in an Airbnb bathroom.

Zia Anger works in moving images. After two 2015 short films, many music videos, and one abandoned, unreleased feature debut—the fallout from which now is reworked and performed as My First Film (2018)—Anger has made evident a rare and real iconoclasm throughout her varied work. She demonstrates an exceptional commitment to radical transparency and a willingness to share, directly and indirectly and at each point in her career, her experience as an artist within the independent film industry.The first of her 2015 films, I Remember Nothing, uses a rotation of five actors to take its viewer through the five stages of epileptic attack, and a series of flashing stimuli to simulate seizure. My Last Film is perhaps more disturbing, a surprising diptych that signals a growing disquiet that has, in the years since, become increasingly reflected in Anger’s work. Unpredictable, and unmistakably absurd, the film is neither tongue-in-cheek nor lighthearted,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSTo commemorate the 20th anniversary of In The Mood For Love, Wong Kar-wai has confirmed plans to release 4K restorations of all of his films—including the currently out-of-print Chungking Express!—for a theatrical tour in 2020. Recommended VIEWINGWe adored Bruno Dumont's Jeannette, the musical vision of Joan of Arc's childhood. Naturally we're delighted by this first trailer for the Cannes-bound sequel, Joan of Arc.A24 has released the official trailer for Lulu Wang's highly anticipated family drama The Farewell, starring rapper Awkwafina as a woman who returns to China after her grandmother is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.Recommended READINGLaura Dern in David Lynch's Wild at Heart.In a new interview with the New York Times, Laura Dern discusses the multiplicity and elasticity of her most memorable performances, as well as...

Infinite Fest is a monthly column by festival programmer and film critic Eric Allen Hatch, author of the recent “Why I Am Hopeful” article for Filmmaker Magazine, tackling the state of cinema as expressed by North American film festivals.RukusI didn’t go to Indie Memphis Film Festival last year, but I’m not going to let that stop me from calling it an important event. The festival, now headed into its 22nd year, has long been on my list to check out, up there with Sarasota, Cucalorus, and Sidewalk in terms of southern regional fests colleagues held in high regard that I haven't yet made it down for. I won't be repeating that mistake in 2019.I’ve been addicted to film festivals, both as an attendee and programmer, for twenty-plus years—long enough to recognize, and filter accordingly, the post-coital glow one often encounters at festival’s end on social media.