Scott Macaulay

Robert Kolodny’s Venice-premiering The Featherweight is the dramatic story of real-life boxer Willie Pep as he exits retirement to attempt a comeback in the ring — all as he’s shadowed by a documentary crew. The film’s action occurs two decades after Pep’s 1940s heyday, with Kolodny and his team, who include producer and screenwriter Steve Loff and editor Robert Greene, convincingly replicating the look and rhythms of 1960s verite documentary to meditate on both the past as well as the boxing film’s durability in the present. Wrote The New Yorker’s Richard Brody in his review, “It’s an instant classic of a boxing movie, with its closeup view of the inseparable agonies and passions of a sport that’s shadowed with death.”

Returning following a one-year hiatus precipitated by the WGA strike is the Gotham Week Project Market, which runs today through October 4 at the Brooklyn Navy Yards. (The final Expo day on branded content will take place at Soho Works.)

Next Thursday, over Zoom at 2:00 PM Eastern, Jon Reiss — a longtime Filmmaker contributor and author of the new and highly recommended (and distribution-focused) 8 Above Substack — and I will be hosting a distribution case study on DIY hit Hundreds of Beavers with producer Kurt Ravenwood. We’re going to investigate how the Hundreds of Beavers

Publication with a focus on independent film, offering articles, links, and resources.

Alfred Hitchcock, the director as well as self-analyzing critical observer, is evoked in the latest documentary from Mark Cousins, titled, appropriately, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock

In a newly released featurette, writer/director/actor Jesse Eisenberg, actor Kieran Cullen, producer Emma Stone and others discuss Eisenberg’s Sundance-premiering feature, A Real Pain, out Friday from Fox Searchlight. It’s a comedy/drama about two brothers navigating long suppressed tensions while on a Holocaust remembrance tour to Poland, and one obvious question to ask is in what order those two elements occurred within the development process? Was Eisenberg attracted to the Holocaust tour concept first, or wanting to explore the fraternal rivalry. That question is answered, along with more, in the above clip.

Filmmaker Rachel Seed’s photographer mother Sheila Turner Seed died when she was just 18 months old, before specific memories could take hold — an absence that structures doc producer-turned-director Seed’s True/False, Hot Docs and DOC NYC-playing A Photographic Memory,

Please consider subscribing to Filmmaker — print or digital — for 40% off in our annual Black Friday sale. Subscribe by Tuesday, December 3, 10:00 AM, Eastern, use the coupon code BLACKFRIDAY, and receive, for U.S. readers, a four-issue print subscription for just $10 or a one-year digital subscription for just $6.00. (That’s about one month of your favorite Substack!)

Publication with a focus on independent film, offering articles, links, and resources.

The Sundance Institute announced today the 87 feature films and six episodic projects selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Among the films are new pictures from returning filmmakers Cherien Dabis, Bill Condon, Amalia Ulman, Ira Sachs, and Amir “Questlove” Thompson, while in the U.S. and World Dramatic Competitions, all 20 filmmakers are making their first appearance at the festival. Additionally, 41% of the entire feature film program across the festival consists of films by first-time directors. Those statistics, says Eugene Hernandez, Director, Sundance Film Festival and Public Programing, in an interview with Filmmaker, are “a reminder of how much […]