On a Jan. 22 inclusivity panel at the festival, titled “Championing Change: The Power of Inclusive Filmmaking,” presented by TheWrap, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and NFP, Sealey said that she hopes audiences learn from her drama’s hero, Melody (Phoebe-Rae Taylor), that “everybody communicates in a different way.”

The filmmaker, who’s previously known for 2021’s “No Man of God” and here worked with screenwriter Daniel Stiepleman to adapt Sharon M. Draper’s 2010 novel of the same name, admitted that there “was a big learning curve for me” to get it right. 

“I remember early on in my research phase, the Think Tank for Inclusion and Equity, they did do a lot of asking people with disabilities, like, what do you want to see more?” she recalled, “What largely came out of that was people with disabilities wanted to see movies that centered on them as human beings and not just on their disability.” 

Sealey added that those consultants also emphasized a desire to see stories that “focused on them not only as human beings, but also wasn’t always about pitying them, and also wasn’t always about them only being only worthy or only valuable because they were superhuman.”

In the case of Melody, she’s a sixth grader who “is very smart,” but Sealey was conscious of adapting the novel in a way that framed her as being “special” for more than just “because she’s a genius.”

“She’s a human being. She’s just like anybody else – she has thoughts, feelings, fears. And so that was what my approach with the film was like. This is like any other tween girl, she just happens to be nonverbal. She happens to use a wheelchair,” Sealey said. “Her having cerebral palsy is a part of how she moves through the world. Her being nonverbal is a part of the way she moves through the world, but it’s not everything about her.”

In telling Melody’s story – which costars Rosemarie DeWitt, Luke Kirby, Judith Light and Michael Chernus – Sealey said that inclusivity was practiced in front of and behind the camera. 

“The inclusivity part was really about not only including people with disabilities in the cast, in the crew, in the creative process, consultants, writers, all of that,” she said. “But, also, just about how we look at people with disabilities, trying not to treat them as objects, trying not to treat them just as their disability, but treating them as a human being.”

“It’s about her finding her voice, but it’s also more importantly about the rest of us learning how to listen and understanding that everybody communicates in a different way,” she said. “Some of us use our voice, some of use our hands, some of us use a computer – we all communicate differently.”

Sealey was joined on the Monday morning panel by “Frida” documentarian Carla Gutierrez, Funny Or Die founder Henry Muñoz and Brown Girls Doc Mafia founder Iyabo Boyd, all of whom spoke to the importance of inclusivity in their own work, their reservations about the state of DEI initiatives in Hollywood today and more. 

Watch the full panel — as moderated by The Curvy Critic, Carla Renata — in the video above.

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The post ‘Out of My Mind’ Director Says Learning ‘Everybody Communicates in a Different Way’ Was Key to Making Her Disability Drama | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

The status of film festivals has long been associated with helping filmmakers and audiences come together to experience and learn about new projects, as well as providing independent films with a boost of clout in their efforts to get sold to big-name studios. Their purpose, and how they’ve served the lifecycle of projects being produced, was one of the questions thrown to Ankner during his panel, “Producers’ Perspectives: Navigating Film Festivals in 2024,” which was presented by TheWrap, UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television and NFP.

Joining Ankner was Jason Forest, executive producer and managing director at Bully Pictures; Jess Daveney, founder and president of Multitude Films; Luke Kelly-Clyne, co-head of HartBeat Independent at Hartbeat and Stacey Reiss, executive producer for documentary narrative films. The panel was moderated by Brian Kite, dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.

“I think film festivals are becoming more important every year,” said Ankner, whose film and TV resume consists largely of projects centered on communities of color and the LGBTQIA+ community. “With the proliferation of content and how we see ourselves engaging in long-form or short-form, film festivals are a catalyst of community advocacy and awareness. For me, having brought films here for years, a lot of those films were films that the studios weren’t interested in, whether it was a topic, whether it was the filmmaker, whether it was a filmmaker’s point of view, and we all know how layered that may be.”

He continued: “I’ve worked on the film sale for Ryan Cooler’s ‘Fruitvale Station’ and Boots Riley’s ‘Sorry to Bother You,’ or ‘Call Me By Your Name.’ These are not movies the studios said they would have made, but they did. Bringing these films to festivals allowed us to generate an independent funding market for these things, and when people can make money off of them and bring them to festivals, typically, those people would put money back into the other films. That was [a] really important part of the process.”

This year, Ankner is helping bring the film “Ponyboi” to the forefront. The film tells story of a young intersex sex worker named Ponyboi (River Gallo), who, over the course of Valentine’s Day in New Jersey, is on the run from the mob after a drug deal gone wrong and he’s forced him to confront his past. The film, which was written by Gallo, also brings along actors Moisés Acevedo, Aphrodite Armstrong, Indya Moore, Victoria Pedretti, Dylan O’Brien and Murray Bartlett. It was directed by Esteban Arango.

Ankner pointed out that while the movie includes Hollywood acting notables, “Ponyboi” — which features the first intersex lead in a film — is very much an independent film.

“You see all of those actors and you think, ‘That’s a studio film.’ It’s not, because for some reason the topic or the point of view didn’t suit that, so we bring it to a film festival for this community to validate its place and culture,” Ankner explained. “I see independent films and film festivals being the only voice to push culture… The things you’re seeing the studios make now are because those things were ventured for the independent space, both in films and in docs.”

Laying out the background for which diverse stories have been able to thrive, Kite questioned whether Ankner would prefer the independent route or studio-backing for his projects. Ideally, Ankner would love for diverse stories to receive more studio support, but was transparent about the reality of that happening.

“I would love for more ‘Ponybois,’ more ‘Sorry to Bother Yous’, more ‘Call Me By Your Names,’ more ‘Dear White Peoples’, more ‘Honey Boys,’ all these films that I’ve worked with over the years, being made by studios. But, there is a process of a studio where they’re looking to deliver a certain product,” Ankner said.

He also highlighted the creative freedoms filmmakers have with going the independent route. “There’s a lot of great execs at the studios, as well as you can find them. But, I think more so for us speaking in a general manner, independence creates a catalyst for conversation that isn’t necessarily taking place. It’s always the outside conversation. It’s always the thing that you’re probably in the audience thinking about right now that ends up here two years later. I think those things are evident.”

Watch the full panel in the video above.

“Ponyboi” is a sales title at Sundance.

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The post ‘Ponyboi’ Producer Mark Ankner Sees Film Festivals, Independent Filmmaking as the ‘Only Voice to Push’ Diverse Stories Forward | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Directed by Brett Story and Stephen Maing, the film chronicles the struggle of the grassroots Amazon Labor Union (ALU) as it attempts to unionize the JFK8 Amazon facility. ALU president Chris Smalls joined the directors to talk to TheWrap executive editor Adam Chitwood, where they discussed Amazon’s aggressive efforts to undermine the union drive.

“It shows how Amazon and the NYPD work together,” Smalls said at TheWrap’s Sundance Portrait and Interview Studio presented by NFP, referring to his on-camera arrest captured in the film. “It shows how policing is used to create fear and doubt, and not just to unionize. When you’re going up against corporations, someone being arrested that’s leading a movement will create fear for other people to step up. So that was the purpose of Amazon calling the police on me.”

Director Stephen Maing called it “utterly shocking to watch it play out,” but said it illustrates the vast resources Amazon is willing to leverage to block the organizing effort.

“Amazon is a company that has no qualms about spending over $4 million on an anti-union campaign,” Maing added. “And then on top of that, using the NYPD, you know, as an extension of the force that they were going to, you know, try and compel the ALU to submit under.”

Despite Amazon’s aggressive tactics, the ALU defied the odds by becoming the first Amazon facility in the U.S. to vote to unionize The ALU is also recognized by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  However, Smalls says the company still refuses to come to the bargaining table nearly a year later.

“Amazon is still refusing to negotiate,” Smalls said. “Because of the slow process of the NLRB in this country, we’re waiting for a bargain order still. And once we get that bargain order, we’re ready to negotiate Day 1.”

The filmmakers say they were drawn to document this struggle because of its implications for the future of labor in America. Only 6% of private sector workers currently belong to a union.

“It was very obvious from the beginning that this was an opportunity to document a struggle that was not just about this one company, it’s about the future of work, it’s about the future of labor organizing,” co-director Story said.

Check out all TheWrap’s Sundance coverage here.

The post Amazon’s Anti-Labor Tactics Spotlighted in Sundance Doc ‘Union’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

“It was about eight or nine years ago, someone came out of the woodwork,” said Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh at TheWrap’s Sundance Portrait and Interview Studio sponsored by NFP. “They had gone to a garage sale in New Jersey and bought canisters of tape that had names on the side. There were other bands on some of the other tapes and they saw ones that said ‘Devo’ and so they bought them. It was 16 millimeter film.”

But because the original tape didn’t have video it required the band to be inventive and remastered it on their own. “It had never been cut together or turned into anything,” said Mothersbaugh. “And they didn’t have sound. But once we figured out what it was we realized our sound man had made an audio documentation of the show that night onto a two-track tape so we were able to marry those together.”

Mothersbaugh continued: “It was great to see it after the fact because we remember David Bowie came out and introduced us, and was backstage with us and said he wanted to produce us. We remember all that stuff, but it was nice to find it on tape. It was kind of amazing.”

For the band, made up of brothers Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale, it was a now or never moment to make a documentary. But they knew they wanted to showcase their rise as a band as well as the philosophy that kept them together. “When we first formed, it was with a philosophy and a concept, and an idea based on our experiences of the real world that maybe man wasn’t the most amazing animal on the planet. Maybe we were the most dangerous and the one animal that was out of touch with nature,” said Mothersbaugh.

That being said, they understood quickly that their sound was at odds with the music being created at the time. “The music that was popular at the time was really vapid,” said Mothersbaugh. “It was concert rock, Boston and Styx. Bands singing things like ‘snorting whiskey and drinking cocaine, I think I’m gonna go insane.’ And disco. It was all really not that interesting to us. I mean, disco had great sounds in it. So we were thinking, ‘Well, let’s go put some content into what we’re doing.'”

You can watch the full interview above.

“Devo” is a sales title at Sundance.

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The post Devo Bandmembers Explain How They Restored Old New York Shows Found on 16mm Film | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

“When I think about cultural shame and being an Asian American boy during that time [the 2000s], we didn’t have the influences we have in culture today,” Wang said during an interview with TheWrap editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman at TheWrap’s Sundance Portrait and Interview Studio presented by NFP. “We had seen movies about what it feels like to be the one Asian American in a sea of white people.”

“Dìdi” is a semi-autobiograhical exploration of a teenage boy growing up in Fremont, California, in the 2000s. And, like a young Wang himself, the boy at the center of it is a skateboarder. “It’s semi-autobiographical but it’s not one to one,” Wang said. “I was a skater. I got into filmmaking through skateboarding, similar to our character.” Wang explained that he “wanted to tell a story about this boy and the different ways that shame manifests in an Asian American boy’s life at this time … and how that shame can keep him from accepting different versions of love.”

For Wang, that search for identity and love kept him from feeling like he had a place as a director, especially in his adolescent days. He said the thought never entered his mind to emulate filmmakers like Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg. “For me, it all led back to skating,” he said. Growing up in an era when cameras were starting to become more accessible, he started making skate videos for fun.

“It wasn’t for anyone, except me and my friends, and that was so fun. I did that for years and years,” he said. His eureka moment — the realization wherein he wanted to become a director — was discovered while watching a skateboard video that director Spike Jonze had made. “It was that idea of, I identified as a skater and I didn’t consider what I was doing to be filmmaking,” Wang said. It wasn’t until he watched Jonze’s video and felt emotional that he wanted to explore how a video could make anyone feel that way.

His work on “Dìdi” is also meant to make audiences feel something, specifically about the struggles of trying to find out who you are as a teenager. “What does it feel like to not fully belong in a place you feel you should belong?” Wang said. What does the lack of positive representation do? Wang recounted he was often was called the “whitest Asian” or “cute for an Asian” and wanted to unpack how that makes a teenager feel. “That was the hope of this movie, was to look back at this era … you don’t have the vocabulary to unpack that or dissect that [at 13].”

Watch the full interview with Wang above.

“Dìdi” is a sales title at Sundance.

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The post Why ‘Dìdi’ Director Sean Wang Has Skateboarding Videos to Thank for His Filmmaking Career | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Linklater said he was immediately drawn in by the bizarre duality of Johnson’s life. “It’s so desperate and weird,” Linklater said at TheWrap’s Sundance Portrait and Interview Studio presented by NFP.

“He was so compelling when he was on the mic, when he was in front of people…and then he would go home and he’d be with his cats.” Powell added.

Powell stars as Johnson, a mild-mannered philosophy professor who secretly moonlights as a gun-for-hire. When asked what drew him to the character, Powell said it was the jarring contrast between Johnson’s badass alter-ego meeting with shady clients, versus his “isolated and sad” homebody existence.

“What an interesting thing to have this duality,” Powell said. “And it was that duality that sprung the thought behind this movie.”

Teaming up once again with Linklater, Powell aims to poke holes in the self-serious hitman thriller with this zany true story. “I would never make a guy moonlight as a philosophy professor or put on costumes to do this,” Powell said, adding that Johnson’s multitudes are “what makes him so fascinating.”

The film promises plenty of boundary-pushing comedy and sex appeal, a welcome change for Linklater after a venture into family fare. “It felt old fashioned,” said Linklater, known for making adult-oriented indies like “Dazed and Confused” and “Everybody Wants Some.”

Powell was also asked about the upcoming “Twisters,” the sequel to 1996 event film “Twister” from Universal.

“It’s amazing to make something really big, and theatrical, and cinematic and emotional… I think audiences are gonna really love it,” Powell said.

“Hit Man” premiered on Monday night at Sundance to a standing ovation.

In his review of the film from the Venice Film Festival, The Wrap’s Ben Croll wrote: “A peak-performance engine running wholly on charisma, Richard Linklater’s ‘Hit Man’ revives and revitalizes a genre in awfully short supply.

“Hit Man” is getting a “limited theatrical release” this summer, just prior to its launch on Netflix on June 7. Watch the full interview in the embed above.

Check out all our Sundance coverage here

The post ‘Hit Man’s Glen Powell and Richard Linklater Were Drawn to ‘Desperate and Weird’ True Story for Netflix Romcom | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Based on Lawrence Wright’s book, “God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State,” native directors Alex Stapleton, liana Sosa and Linklater painted their own portraits of Texas. Linklater’s return to his Huntsville roots took him on a process of search and discovery in which he determined an excessive amount of his high school football teammates ended up unemployed or incarcerated by the Texas prison system.

“If you really break down my high school football team I was on a really inordinate amount of my teammates ended up on one side of the bars or the other,” he said at TheWrap’s Sundance Portrait and Interview Studio presented by NFP. ”What you really learn as you get closer it’s brown and black, for sure, and it’s poor white. Let’s never forget that.”

In returning to his hometown to dig for the docuseries, the “Before” trilogy director observed how the city made the news, which was normally for negative headlines.

“That’s the only time we hit the map, when we’re executing a grandmother or someone who’s proven to have an IQ of 67,” he said. “We get national. Huntsville makes the national news when it’s something horrific or the rest of the country’s like ‘What?’”

Stapleton spotlighted the joy each director tried to capture as part of what Wright describes as a paradox in his book. She related that concept to how Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused”(1993), starring Matthew McConaughey, reflects Linklater’s style that was shaped by where he grew up.

“As a kid growing up, and knowing what he’s done for the state, and putting us on the map as filmmakers, and watching ‘Dazed and Confused’ and understanding its connection to Huntsville, it’s so cool to see how Huntsville inspired him as an artist,” she said.

Linklater reflected that the influence shows in his work even to this day.

“You can’t escape your past. We don’t pick it, that’s where we come out in the world,” he said. “I love Texas. I love these people, everybody I grew up [with] – friendly, good, good people. Texas has so many.”

“I think we’ve been misrepresented so much by our government in the last two generations. Not always, but it’s always been a big power structure,” he added. “There’s actually a little room for optimism, not probably at this moment but as we all look to the future I don’t think we would have done something like this if we didn’t think things could change for the better.”

Sosa added to Linklater’s point of optimism.

“We forget that there’s a lot of activism happening in Texas around trans rights, around the abortion bill, immigration. People are on the ground really putting their lives at risk to change things and try to change things,” she said. “In all our episodes we do show some of that optimism and people not giving up. That’s the contradictory part of it, too. People still have to live and work there, and how do you do that? You gotta fight, too, right?”

Check out all our Sundance coverage here

The post Richard Linklater Discovered ‘Inordinate Amount’ of High School Peers in Prison While Filming Hometown Doc ‘God Save Texas’ appeared first on TheWrap.

As Fogel told TheWrap editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman at our Sundance Portrait and Interview Studio presented by NFP, she loved Kerry Howley’s script, which portrayed Winner as “this funny woman who was very much her own person” and “sort of too smart for her own good.”

Kathryn Newton, who plays Reality’s sister, Brittany, was also at the studio, along with costar Danny Ramirez.

“Just the idea that this funny, vibrant millennial person could become Public Enemy No. 1 — how did that happen? Besides just the headline, that was what drew me to it,” Fogel said.

She and star Emilia Jones, reuniting after working together on “Cat Person,” conferred with Winner personally to nail the specifics about her case. Read on for TheWrap’s conversation with Fogel, Jones and Newton below.

Susanna, you don’t think of the film as a comedy?

Susanna Fogel: No, but that there’s humor in it. I think that distinguishes it from most movies that are also a little political. A serious movie about a funny person was what we set out to do, because Reality is funny. Her sense of humor got her into a lot of trouble. Reality is complicated and polarizing, but she’s really lovable.

Why did you decide to cast Emilia Jones as Reality?

S.F.: We just needed someone who could sell her sense of humor and who felt like a real, accessible person and not just a symbol of a thing. 

Emilia, in that moment in the film when Reality is going to break the law, did you have to build up to that in your head? Was that a switching moment or was she just wired that way from the jump?

Emilia Jones: I listened to loads of podcasts that Reality has done and interviews, and I tried to get inside her head in that way. And then, obviously, I spent time with her. But I love that in the script, Reality has these voiceovers. It’s kind of like a monologue in her head. And when I was shooting that scene when she is wanting to have a look [at the classified information], she’s like, “You would want to look, right?” And when I was reading [the script], I was like, “Yeah, I guess I would, I just don’t have the guts myself.”

That’s why I admire Reality. Since doing this movie, I definitely think about things differently. I think some people in life are happy to sit back and let life play out. And there are a few people who want to stand up and they want to question things. Reality wants to improve things and people and situations wherever she goes. That is sometimes a recipe for conflict.

S.F.: Obviously, it changed her life in ways that were very traumatic for her. But also, there’s this teachable moment [about] whether we should take a stand when we see something failing an institution in that way, or whether we shouldn’t. We’re kind of like, “Oh, the institutions are so broken, they’re so broken,” but who’s willing to take that risk [to become a whistleblower]?

You’re sort of at your most ethically and ideologically extreme in your 20s. And you’re defining your character by your ideology. And the stakes for most people are like, getting in a fight with someone on Twitter, not five years in prison.

Watch TheWrap full conversation with the “Winner” team in the video above.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

The post ‘Winner’ Director Wants to Highlight the Humor, Humanity of Whistleblower Reality Winner | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

“There is something about, over the past few years, the anger people have felt about so much hate-fueled violence in the world,” Boden said at theWrap’s Sundance Portrait and Interview Studio presented by NFP. “So, I think it was cathartic for us to explore in a very safe place, like a movie, a bit of a revenge fantasy against that hate-fueled violence.”

Fleck recounted how he and his parents generation grew up watching movies where “everyone could agree the Nazis were the bad guys,” and made “Freaky Tales” as a nod to those movies.

“Liberal, conservative, we all knew who the bad guys were, and now it feels like there’s this gray area…and we’re like, ‘No, the f—ing Nazis are the bad guys and they’re going to get it!’ and then we light them on fire,” he said.

Starring Pedro Pascal, Dominique Thorne and longtime Boden/Fleck collaborator Ben Mendelsohn, “Freaky Tales” is set in Oakland in 1987 and follows four interconnected stories. True to Fleck’s promise, the film opens with a pair of punks fighting back against Nazi skinheads who set their favorite underground club on fire.

Fleck said he always wanted to make a movie called “Freaky Tales,” but in his talks with Boden about ideas for a movie with that title, nothing seemed to work and the pair moved on to other projects.

But, after the pandemic, the concept of a violent anthology film was finally the right fit and Fleck believes their experience working on the 2019 comic book movie “Captain Marvel” had a hand in that.

“Part of what unlocked the story beats when Anna finally said ‘Yes, this is the movie we’re going to make’ is that the previous versions we tried had character beats, nuance,” said Fleck. “I think neither one of us would have the idea to put these action sequences and visual effects into this story had we not had the Marvel experience.”

Watch the full interview with Boden and Fleck in the clip above.

“Freaky Tales” is a sales title at Sundance.

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The post ‘Freaky Tales’ Is Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s Reminder That ‘Nazis Are the F–king Bad Guys!’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Debuting at the Sundance Film Festival this year, the film tells the story of a Black artist striving to use his paintings to find freedom from his past. But, when his estranged father, a recovering addict, shows up hoping to reconcile, everything changes. Together, they have to figure out a path forward.

Stopping by TheWrap’s Sundance Portrait and Interview Studio presented by NFP with his stars, Kaphar explained that, though this story definitely came from his own life, he knew almost immediately that it couldn’t be a documentary — even though he tried to make it one at first.

“It’s rooted in my experience, but it had to go beyond that to be the kind of story that I wanted it to be,” Kaphar explained. “I started the project by making a documentary and realizing that that was insufficient to tell the story, the way that I wanted to tell the story.”

He continued, “Because the documentary told me about why I was where I was right then. It didn’t help me understand how we got there. So, this script allowed us to have a conversation about fathers and sons and mothers and family — and fundamentally, forgiveness.”

The film boasts a heavy-hitting cast, with André Holland, John Earl Jelks, Andra Day and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor all starring. Day, an Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winner for Lee Daniels’ “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” told TheWrap that Kaphar himself was the largest draw to the project, but so was the opportunity to work alongside the rest of the cast.

“To be back [at Sundance] with this film — which in my opinion, will be legendary in cinema,” she said. “I think it’s just such a groundbreaking film to be here with, on this couch with this incredible cast of people. I’m not blowing their heads up, they’re giants in their industry. There’s few people that can do what they do.”

Day continued, “And so to be here with this first-time director, that is so amazing with these incredible actors. It’s amazing. It’s a blessing.”

Sundance itself has had an influence on Kaphar’s filmmaking, so to be a first-time director at this particular festival held even more space for him, emotionally.

“I think for me, see, the movies that I find myself often attracted to are Sundance movies,” he noted. “Those are independent filmmakers who are trying, experimenting, doing different kinds of things. And so to be able to be included in that cadre of artists feels like a huge honor.”

You can watch TheWrap’s full interview with the cast and director of “Exhibiting Forgiveness” in the video above.

“Exhibiting Forgiveness” is a sales title at Sundance.

Check out all our Sundance coverage here.

The post Why ‘Exhibiting Forgiveness’ Director Didn’t Want to Make His Autobiographical Film a Documentary | Video appeared first on TheWrap.