CONTENTS FILMMAKER • Fall 2016 • Volume 25 • Issue Number 1

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26 HIGH TIDE There have been many independent films dealing with grief and loss, but none as intelligently observant, richly conveyed and, finally, devastatingly emotional as KENNETH LONERGAN’s Manchester by the Sea. Following up the lengthy post-production of his previous masterpiece, Margaret, Lonergan casts CASEY AFFLECK, who gives a careerdefining performance, as a traumatized blue-collar worker forced to open up emotionally when tasked with taking care of his late brother’s disinterested teenage son. Interview by JAMES PONSOLDT.

32 A WOMAN ABOVE EVERYTHING ELSE In the same season that he has essayed the life of the Chilean poet in Neruda, director PABLO LARRAÍN completes his masterful biographical twofer with the provocative, brilliant Jackie. NATALIE PORTMAN gives a hypnotically daring performance as Jacqueline Kennedy, spinning the Camelot mythology in the days following her husband’s assassination. Audacious and searching, Jackie is great cinema that challenges the pieties of so many other period biopics. SCOTT MACAULAY talks with Larraín.

38 FATAL JOURNEY As his own one-man crew, GIANFRANCO ROSI spent a year on the small Mediterranean island of Lampedusa for Fire at Sea, capturing the life of a trio of local residents as their home is impacted by a humanitarian crisis — the waves of refugees landing there from North Africa. Deeply connecting with Lampedusa’s life rhythms, Rosi has made a poetic, highly original and ultimately devastating film that strays far from the conventions of most documentaries chronicling this subject matter. In an interview that spanned an entire weekend, fellow filmmaker ROBERTO MINERVINI learns about Rosi’s singular process.

44 IN CHARACTER If you asked anyone attending this year’s Cannes Film Festival what they liked, you got one consistent response: “The German comedy.” German writer/director MAREN ADE’s Toni Erdmann is indeed very funny, and it’s also one of the most observant, intelligently realized films about the collision of workplace values and family relationships to have come along in years. PAUL DALLAS sits down with Ade to discuss her celebrated second feature.

48 INSIDE LOOKING OUT In Winter 2008, BARRY JENKINS made the cover of Filmmaker with his jewel of a debut picture, Medicine for Melancholy. It’s been a long wait for his sophomore feature, but the visually stunning, blazingly well-acted Moonlight more than fulfills Jenkins’s early promise. Told in three distinct chapters, it’s the story of an emotionally battered young boy growing into a strong but closeted gay man — a journey suffused with a near hallucinatory sense of detail and much wisdom about the construction of masculine identity in today’s African-American culture. Interview by BRANDON HARRIS.

52 EXAMINED LIFE After Eden, a decades-sprawling examination of generational anxieties within Europe’s EDM scene, MIA HANSEN-LØVE returns with Things to Come, a powerfully intimate new feature anchored by a transfixing ISABELLE HUPPERT performance. In a role inspired by Hansen-Løve’s own mother, Huppert plays a philosophy professor who experiences a a sudden series of disorienting crises — personal, professional, intellectual. VADIM RIZOV talks with writer/director Hansen-Løve.

56 MEMORIES OF THE REVOLUTION NEIL YOUNG visits with LIZZIE BORDEN to learn the history of her incendiary feminist experimental film, Regrouping.

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