Now in its eighth year, The Independent’s 10 Filmmakers to Watch highlights filmmakers – producers, programmers, animators, and others – whose upcoming work we think will wow you this year. Submit your nominations by February 15, 2016.
If cinema can function as a vehicle for a nation’s collective memory, Afghanistan only recently began to recollect itself. Pietra Brettkelly’s documentary, A Flickering Truth, mines the Afghan Film Archive for the nation’s cultural history and follows the team of people who are working to protect it and share it with the world.
Lizzie Velasquez turned down interest from a lot of TV outlets and documentarians before agreeing to work with first-time director Sara Hirsh Bordo. Together they capture Velasquez’s inspiring story of personal triumph and anti-bullying political activism. A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story hits theaters and VOD on September 25, 2015.
Maddy Kadish reviews films featured at the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival, which is now extending the festival fun with an online screening room.
The Independent‘s Minhae Shim, talks with esteemed filmmaker Ross McElwee (Bright Leaves, Photographic Memory) about filmmaker Amelia Evans. McElwee, Evans’ former professor, was an advisor on her film, Minor Attraction. Read about how he advised Evans through the complex subject matter of her documentary.
New Zealand human rights lawyer turned filmmaker Amelia Evans is not one to shy away from controversy. She follows the lives of pedophiles to find ways to prevent child abuse and understand their taboo attraction to children in her thought-provoking documentary Minor Attraction.
Game developer Navid Khonsari and filmmaker Bessie Khonsari join our 10 to Watch list with a genre-merging project, 1979 Revolution, a video game that aims to evoke the empathy of film. Navid and Bessie Khonsari participated in the New Frontier Story Lab at the Sundance Institute in 2014 and 1979 Revolution appeared as an exhibit in Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier and at SXSW in 2015.
Producer Stephanie Langhoff has a dream job working for Mark and Jay Duplass. Her work on The Bronze got her noticed at Sundance – where the film’s much-talked-about sex scene also turned some heads.
Having lived on three continents, Thomas Ikimi brings an international perspective to his films. His latest is the short thriller Nostradamus, which revolves around drone warfare and premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, and coincidentally was chosen as one of the best films of the fest by our senior critic, Kurt Brokaw.