We Need to Talk About Oscar

‘Pop Pop’ world premieres at PÖFF in Tallinn after over half a decade of work, and Dylan Stephen Levers recalls how complete the script was at the outset and how the country’s shifting mood, culminating at the Capitol on January 6th, forced it to bend. Cinematographer Consuelo Althouse describes how she entered the picture, and both admit what it cost to keep an unfinished feature alive as their lives, careers, and tastes kept changing around it.Best friends Dustin and Dibz share an apartment and an internet series, fresh out of college and unsure where they fit in a messy adult world of male fragility and identity crisis. With cameras rolling near real protests, the filmmakers found themselves inside history while making fiction, and they wonder what a documentary cut of that material would look like. The film’s sharp take on online culture, from toxic masculinity to cancel culture, came with a question of how to keep compassion in view without dulling the satire.Its look riffs on retro computer interfaces, built as a retrofuturistic digital world soaked in memes and social media references, and they recall whether that concept was fixed on the page, how it influenced the framing of scenes, and how it eased or complicated the edit. They also talk about what a neutral camera even means when fiction and documentary share the same frame, and what lines they would not cross on set through all those lean years.

Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson spent years trying to get ‘Mouse,’ shot in Kelly’s Arkansas hometown, made, and a detour through ‘Ghostlight’ showed them how small a footprint they could work with and still keep full control. The film grows from a death Kelly lived through as a teenager, wrapped around an invented friendship between Minnie and the grieving mother, and she speaks to keeping that blend honest to her memory while Alex finds where his own instincts belong in staging it.Sophie Okonedo’s arrival as a British pianist adrift in central Arkansas gave Helen a loneliness that only deepens once Callie is gone, and Katherine Mallen Kupferer, known for her big, booming energy in ‘Ghostlight,’ is asked here for the opposite, a girl who keeps her feelings sealed away. The directors recall spotting that hidden range in her and helping her trust stillness, and Kelly’s background as an actor tunes her to talents performers haven’t yet discovered in themselves. Minnie’s pull from her mother Barbara’s cluttered animal rescue toward the hushed elegance of Helen’s house takes its shape from Linda Lee’s design, which makes it feel like a hunger for calm instead of ingratitude.Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Phantom Thread’ and Terrence Malick’s ‘The Thin Red Line’ guided the look, and they explain why teenage heartbreak earned that grand, serious treatment. Two cinematographers, Nate Hurtsellers and Luke Dyra, worked side by side as A and B camera, and the pair break down how they kept the footage cohesive. They also look ahead to ‘The Steel Harp,’ where they direct from inside the action with Kelly back on screen as the lead, and how that changes the way they communicate when she can’t slip away to the monitor.(Photo: Courtesy of IFC Films)

Dan Sallitt returns to Jackie, the young woman at the center of ‘The Unspeakable Act,’ more than a decade later, and he tells how his view of sequels shifted once he made one. He recounts when the urge to revisit that film first arrived and what it meant that it began as one chapter of a planned trilogy. Many people at the New York Film Festival premiere had never seen the original, and he says what that showed him about how well the new film stands alone. He also addresses how keeping its subject buried, where the first film spoke about it openly, changed the way he built tension in the dialogue.Between the two films, Dan directed Tallie Medel in ‘Fourteen,’ and he outlines what that experience added to their rapport when they came back to Jackie. An intimacy coordinator brought an unfamiliar authority onto a set he usually keeps tightly in hand, notable for a filmmaker who stopped shooting nude scenes years ago to avoid friction, and he describes how he adjusted. Jackie is now training for a career in counseling while carrying unresolved feelings of her own, and he points to where that setup gave him the most charged material.Writing about film is a solitary habit while directing is a team effort, and Dan admits his early notes to actors were so cerebral that they sometimes hurt performances. He remembers when that sank in and describes the plainer, more playable terms he uses now. The conversation ends back at the project’s origins, with his decision that the trilogy’s third part will never be made, and the feelings that stay with him about leaving Jackie’s story suspended after part two.

Alex Mechanik worked side by side with wife Samy Burch on short films before the two broke through with ‘May December,’ and his debut feature ‘This Is the One They’ll Remember Me By’ finds him directing alone, with Samy credited for the story. He recounts how they divided the early groundwork and why this was the project to steer himself. The role of Robin Beck was imagined for his friend O-Lan Jones, a character actress long overdue for a showcase, and he describes when she learned about it and how it changed the character.Instead of a locked script, Alex wrote a skeletal outline that left the cast room to riff, a looseness inspired by his love of improvised television comedy, and he says just how bare that outline was on day one. Keith Carradine, Ray Wise, Aidy Bryant, and Charles Melton all play themselves, and he marks the boundary between poking fun at their public images and keeping them inside Robin’s reality. Cinematographer Lance Bangs lends the convention scenes the immediacy of nonfiction, and Alex explains how far that raw feel went before the film eased toward conventional storytelling, along with how grainy tape footage from Robin’s earlier career was shaped into her own recollections.Umberto Smerilli’s sweeping orchestral music plays against that imagery, and Alex answers whether it mirrors the grandeur Robin imagines for her own life or gently teases the awkwardness around her. He also explains why the story follows someone who has already tasted fame instead of a newcomer fighting to be noticed. The closing tribute to Paul Bartel and Jackie Burch carries personal weight for a film so preoccupied with being remembered and loving the work.(Photo credit: Lance Bangs)

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 Yourselves!’ to a larger crew changed the way they work together.Ambition runs through both of their films, and with ‘Wicker’ it presses against the limits of what a single shooting day can hold. They describe where vision and logistics collide and which creative element they protect first when time runs short. Alexander Skarsgård plays the title figure inside a practical suit built by Weta Workshop, a costume that restricted his movement, and they explain how it altered their notes, blocking, and framing of his gaze while his performance stayed rooted in feeling.Cinematographer Lol Crawley, a past guest on the show, shot ‘Wicker’ in the window between ‘The Brutalist’ and Damien Chazelle’s next picture, and the directors share what they believe drew him to their world, along with how his precise single camera instincts shaped their coverage of each scene. Looking across their work, from an original debut to an adaptation, they also speak to the pull of odd premises anchored in real human bonds, and the spark that tells them a story deserves their time.(Photos: Courtesy of Black Bear)

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, here through a young woman at the edge of adulthood who is about to lose her sense of play.The story drops from a sterile dentist’s chair into a sedated dream, and Isabella explains how that cold, clinical start shapes the look of everything that follows. With cinematographer Barton Cortright, a previous guest on the show, she built a visual language that avoids the usual dream sequence tricks and keeps the anesthesia state tied to the body. Isabelle Grill and Zoe Ziegler face each other as two versions of one person, and she tells us what made their meeting feel like real inner dialogue instead of theater.At under seven minutes, the film plays closer to a tale than a conventional short, and Isabella talks about how that framing let her bend pacing in the edit in ways a waking world story would resist. Its polished, high concept imagery points toward a first feature, so we close with the forthcoming challenges of upholding a controlled aesthetic once far more voices crowd the set, and the very first job she expects to hand off to someone else.(Photo credit: Marcus Maddox)

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 close shifted his understanding of what it takes to create a space where people feel safe.Drumming and dancing hum constantly beneath the film, yet its attention settles on the generations sharing time along the edges. Sky and cinematographer Shaandiin Tome describe the discipline that kept the lens there instead of chasing the spectacle at the center. The central figures appear as voices over the footage rather than through sit down interviews, and Sky pinpoints when that approach took hold. With emcee Ruben Littlehead and Arena Director Quanah Matheson already steering the day, he also explains how control of the room’s rhythm got shared.Jamie John, a nonbinary dancer taking part in the traditionally female Jingle Dance, brings tradition and change into the same frame, and Sky details how the two worked together so that their presence felt like pure celebration. The film then settles into a half hour unbroken take of a Northern Traditional dance special, and Sky pinpoints the moment he knew everything else could fall away. He also lays out the missteps he sees well meaning documentary crews make when entering Indigenous gatherings, missteps this film was built to avoid.

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 he loves in a way meant to feel threatening and dread soaked on screen.Jesse walks us through how he and his crew worked to avoid the flattened, gray-blue look often applied to coastal or remote settings, aiming instead for something textured and alive. He set the story during a Come Home Year, a real Newfoundland tradition that pulls former residents back into town, giving him a built-in way to stage friction between people who stuck around through hard times and those returning from elsewhere.Jesse also reflects on premiering the opening episodes at TIFF on a massive cinema screen, even though the show was conceived for television, and how designing for home viewing shaped his choices around both open water sequences and tighter interior scenes. At its core, he frames the show's real threat as change itself, a community watching its industry and way of life slip away, and considers how his own years navigating a constantly shifting television business fed into how he wrote these characters reacting to losing theirs.(Photo: Courtesy of Netflix)

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 fascination with the road trip as a distinctly American form, and with the bleak, otherworldly quiet of the Salton Sea as a setting.Much of the conversation centers on directing Haley Joel Osment as Andy, a character living with schizophrenia, and how Thomas balanced guiding that performance with trusting what Osment discovered on his own, including a moment on set that reshaped his sense of the character entirely. He also discusses casting Beck Bennett as Jeff, a brother pulled suddenly into caregiving while still searching for his own footing, and how he used the absurdity of the entertainment industry to offset the story's heavier emotional terrain.Thomas connects his theater background to the rehearsal process he built for both actors, aiming for something true beneath the film's shifts between humor and pain. He also unpacks the title's tennis roots and how they tie into Bruce's past as a disgraced professional, before reflecting on how far he's come since his first day on set and what that journey revealed about his voice as a filmmaker.

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 to consciously set those instincts aside.The city around Sofia moves fast, but time slows the moment she steps inside a stranger's home, and Paula walks through the pacing and blocking choices behind that shift, protecting a sense of quiet within scenes that otherwise sit inside a hectic day. She also unpacks the irony of making such a measured film under the same high pressure conditions indie sets usually produce, and what it took to keep her crew from falling into the very chaos the film observes.Paula gets into the toll of constantly watching and drawing from strangers without fully showing up as herself, and whether that same transactional dynamic extends into independent filmmaking more broadly, including any observational habits she's had to unlearn to stay present as a director. Turning to how younger creatives have responded to a film this honest about the industry's exhaustion, she weighs whether that honesty makes the path ahead feel more daunting or more navigable for them.