Sho Miyake answers life’s greatest questions
The Japanese director of Small, Slow But Steady and Two Seasons, Two Strangers talks about confronting existential themes through quiet character portraits.
Joachim Trier finds his place Sentimental Value, one of the year’s most critically lauded family dramas, is as much about setting as it is character. The director tells me how he got there.
The small film that confronts big problems
 Director Hlynur Pálmason wanted to make a new family film. So in The Love That Remains, he featured some of his own.
Sean Baker writes the ending first
The director of Anora talks about representing sex work onscreen and how sticking the landing of a film means thinking about it first.
Kelly Reichardt’s anti-heist movieI spoke with the director of The Mastermind about why her crime movie is about a guy who can’t charm his way out of trouble.
Jeff Buckley died young but is immortalized in a new documentary
The director of It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, Amy Berg, tells me about discovering a trove of voicemails the musician left for his mother.
The Beast confronts the past, present, and future
A period piece, a contemporary drama, and a speculative sci-fi film all in one, The Beast’s director, Bertrand Bonello, explains how he used three parallel narratives to explore a single idea.
The musical at the end of the world
Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End is a musical about wicked people. But it’s very different from Wicked.
The Brutalist was built to capture an immigrant’s ambitions
Brady Corbet’s 3.5-hour saga is a tale of one man’s journey through architecture and assimilation — and one of the year’s best films. The director tells me how he got away with it.
Hirokazu Kore-eda is so back
The director of Monster talks about the complexities (and simplicities) of portraying multiple points of view.