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“I Don’t Want To Be On Stage If I’m Not Vibrating Inside with Life”: Hadi Tabbal, Back To One, Episode 336
The incredible Lebanese actor Hadi Tabbal just finished the monumental Broadway run of Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play English. He originated the role of Omid, and performed in various iterations of this powerful and transformative play over the last few years. On this episode, he talks about the fascinatingly unique aspect of English that is unlike any other play he’s performed, and what he means when he says it is “alive” every night and “very delicate,” and he has to “take care” not to “derail” it. He explains the difference between “discovery” and “deciding,” talks about the “saddest” part of […]
by Peter Rinaldi
in Back to One
on Apr 1, 2025 -
Back To One Episode 335: Magazine Dreams‘s Jonathan Majors
Jonathan Majors is an actor. His latest film is Magazine Dreams. He sat down with me to talk about the work. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. And if you’re enjoying what you are hearing, please subscribe and rate us! Follow Back To One on Instagram.
by Peter Rinaldi
in Back to One
on Mar 25, 2025 -
“Don’t Wait for Permission” Gazer star Ariella Mastroianni, Back To One, Episode 334
Ariella Mastroianni is an actor from New Jersey by way of Ontario, Canada. With director Ryan J. Sloan, she co-wrote and co-produced Gazer, which she also stars in. The film, which the duo shot on weekends over the course of two years, brings the paranoid thriller genre into wildly original new territory. On this episode, Mastroianni tells the story of deciding to shoot on film, using their own money, with no formal support, no connections, just a deep desire to make the film they were both dying to see. She talks about the tools her acting teachers (like Brad Fleischer […]
by Peter Rinaldi
in Back to One
on Mar 18, 2025 -
Speaking in Tongues: How Koyaanisqatsi Was Reborn as The Vivid Unknown
When I step into the exhibition hall, three large screens display rapidly shifting, AI-generated images of natural and industrial landscapes. The overstimulating visuals resist easy interpretation, and they are also responsive to the viewers in the room. The video stops when the room is empty and speeds up as the room becomes more crowded. The longer one stays in the room, the more one’s “shadow” on the screen becomes visible—effects all made possible by a complex real-time vision-tracking system. This is The Vivid Unknown, an immersive installation that recreates the groundbreaking 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi using AI. The piece is a […]
by Deniz Tortum
in Emergence
on Mar 18, 2025 -
Life, Compressed: Austin Bunn’s Short Film Screenwriting: A Craft Guide and Anthology
Familiarity is where short films go to die. So says Austin Bunn, rephrasing a statement by the British-Moroccan filmmaker Fyzal Boulifa, who feels that the abundance of shorts characterizing our moment makes playing it safe as a screenwriter the biggest risk of all. Boulifa is just one of many filmmakers cited in Bunn’s new book, Short Film Screenwriting: A Craft Guide and Anthology, published in October 2024 by Bloomsbury. Bunn may be best known to Filmmaker readers as the co-author, with Christine Vachon, of 2007’s A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and […]
by Holly Willis
in Extra Curricular
on Mar 18, 2025 -
Blue Skies in Park City: Against the “Off Year” Sundance 2025 Narrative
Reports of Sundance’s death are greatly exaggerated. Even before this year’s festival was over, industry journalists rushed to declare its demise, from The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman (“Low Sales. No Standouts. Slow Sundance. Where Does Independent Film Go From Here?”) to The Ankler’s Richard Rushfield (“Get it Together, Indie A-Holes. What part of ‘extinction event’ do you not understand?”). But let’s not jump to conclusions. Maybe “the vibe was off,” as one producer notes, but what do you expect after twin catastrophes—the Los Angeles fires and the inauguration of Donald Trump—were still smoldering during the event? “I think the market was […]
by Anthony Kaufman
in Industry Beat
on Mar 18, 2025 -
“The Only Way I Can Go on a Set Is If My Head is Out on the Chopping Block and I’m Begging for the Blade to Come Down”: Vincent D’Onofrio, Back To One, Episode 333
An actor’s actor of the first order, Vincent D’Onofrio has been delivering “all in” performances, usually in supporting roles, for nearly four decades—Full Metal Jacket, Men In Black, Household Saints, Steal This Movie!, The Cell, The Magnificent Seven, to name just a few, not to mention 10 audience-loving seasons of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He’s getting more accolades for his latest performance as Wilson Fisk in Daredevil: Born Again. On this episode he talks about the “emotional event” that he has to summon to bring about Fisk’s voice in that series and its predecessor. He takes us all the […]
by Peter Rinaldi
in Back to One
on Mar 11, 2025 -
“To Be Able To Play a Flawed, Complex, Messy Woman Who Is Morally Ambiguous …That To Me Is the Juicy Stuff”: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Back To One, Episode 332
The celebrated period drama Belle marked the arrival of Gugu Mbatha-Raw and since then she hasn’t stopped impressing audiences in films like Motherless Brooklyn, Misbehaviour and series like Doctor Who, Black Mirror (San Junipero episode), Loki, The Morning Show, and Surface, which is now releasing episodes from its second season. On that Apple TV+ series, Gugu plays Sophie, a woman who has lost her recent memories and must piece them together. She talks about the “liberating” feeling she got playing someone with a missing back story and how it forced her to be present. She explains how she utilizes her […]
by Peter Rinaldi
in Back to One
on Mar 4, 2025 -
“It’s About Self Exposure and Allowing Someone to See” Caveh Zahedi, Back To One, Episode 331
Caveh Zahedi is one of the most influential independent filmmakers of our time. Jay Duplass, Lena Dunham, Richard Linklater, Greta Gerwig are all big fans of his 30+ years worth of ultra-autobiographical work (five features, I am A Sex Addict perhaps being the most popular). His magnum opus, The Show About The Show, started out as a “self-reflexive TV show about its own making” for BRIC TV and has continued despite lawsuits, loss of distribution, re-castings, and many more obstacles, thanks to Zahedi’s dogged determination to simply tell the story, mostly through re-enactments using the actual people in his orbit […]
by Peter Rinaldi
in Back to One
on Feb 25, 2025 -
Considerations: Some Final Predictions
Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. This is my final Considerations of the season—a somewhat bittersweet statement to write. It’s been a lot of fun covering this wacky and wild Oscar season, even as I (along with so many other folks I’ve spoken to over the last few weeks) am also extremely ready for it to be done. But with voting closing on Feb. 18, we’ve basically reached the end of the line for campaigning. And what a season, one that […]
by Tyler Coates
in Considerations
on Feb 21, 2025
