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John McNaughton is a filmmaker without prejudice when it comes to genre or budget; the stark horror of “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” is as far from the deliriously gorgeous excess of “Wild Things” as that film is from the experimental documentary “Condo Painting,” and “Mad Dog and Glory” proves McNaughton could have been an accomplished studio stylist had he chosen to go that way.

The variety in his work stems from how McNaughton has always seen directing — and life — as an endeavor that necessitated trying new things. “Before I became a filmmaker, there were many things I wanted to do, and I did them,” McNaughton told IndieWire. “I joined a traveling carnival, built sailboats, and when I lived in New Orleans, I wound up buying silver jewelry and cutting gemstones. Because life is an adventure. And once I became a filmmaker, it was a similar thing.”

From September...

This article is part of IndieWire’s 2000s Week celebration. Click here for a whole lot more.

When the 2000s began, Todd Field was a journeyman actor best known for his work in “Ruby in Paradise,” “Eyes Wide Shut,” and a pair of Jan de Bont spectacles.. A year into the decade, he would be recognized as one of the most promising filmmakers of his generation after writing and directing “In the Bedroom” (2001), a low-budget indie that became a surprising commercial success on its way to five Oscar nominations. Looking back now, Field recognizes that it was a unique time not just for him, but for film history in general.

“There are so many advantages now, technically, for young filmmakers starting out,” Field told IndieWire. “But in terms of actually having people see the work, it seems much harder. The idea that this film got made, that it got into Sundance,...

Madeleine Gavin’s Sundance award-winning documentary “Beyond Utopia” has garnered the best documentary and best doc editing honors at the 24th annual Woodstock Film Festival.

The documentary, which was recently acquired by Roadside Attractions, is vying for Academy Award attention.

Using hidden camera footage, the doc follows the high-stakes journey that a handful of desperate families make in order to defect from North Korea — a country with the most brutal regime on earth, led by a dictator, Kim Jong-un.

Doc jurors included directors Barbara Kopple (“Harlan County USA”) Richard Rowley (“ Kingdom of Silence”) and Heidi Ewing (“Jesus Camp”).

“This year’s winner is an astonishingly intimate, white-knuckle thriller following families trying to escape North Korea,” the jurors said in a joint statement. “Stitched together from raw, first person footage, it is impossible not to feel the heart-breaking courage as a family clings to each other during a nighttime crossing of the Mekong River.

“I remember seeing a film that became really formative for me called ‘Ruby in Paradise.’ It was a film about a young woman finding herself. It’s a simple film. A beautiful film. And I thought, ‘Wow. I didn’t know a film could be like this.’ I’d never seen anything like this before.”

That was director Ava DuVernay in the documentary “Only in Theaters” talking about “Ruby in Paradise,” winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival and one of several exquisitely crafted dramas from Florida writer-director Victor Nunez. Since his feature debut “Gal Young Un” in 1979, Nunez has slowly, quietly, and consistently built one of the American independent cinema’s most vital bodies of work, one centered around complex regional character studies like “Ruby” and its follow-up “Ulee’s Gold,” for which Peter Fonda was nominated for an Oscar.

These films, along with Nunez’s 1984 masterpiece “A Flash of Green,...

Joining an illustrious list of honorees that includes Clint Eastwood, Amy Poehler and Geena Davis, Josh Brolin is set to receive the 2023 Sun Valley Film Festival’s Vision Award, which recognizes entertainment veterans for the impact on the industry. Brolin began his career more than 35 years ago as one of the stars of Richard Donner’s “The Goonies,” and he’s since won acclaim for work in films as varied as Ethan and Joel Coen’s “No Country for Old Men,” Oliver Stone’s “W.,” Gus Van Sant’s “Milk,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice,” Joe and Anthony Russo’s “Avengers: Infinity War” and its sequel, “Endgame,” and more.

That many of those high-profile roles came to him more than 20 years after becoming an actor isn’t something Brolin resents now — in fact quite the opposite. “That feels amazing as opposed to somebody who came out of the gate...

When he made his first feature, Gal Young ‘Un, in 1979, director Victor Nuñez was a pioneer in an American independent film movement still in its early stages. Over the next several decades, Nuñez continued to work on personal projects on his home turf of northern Florida. He worked rewardingly with gifted actors like Ed Harris in A Flash of Green and launched Ashley Judd’s acting career with Ruby in Paradise in 1993. Peter Fonda earned his only Oscar nomination as an actor when he starred in Nuñez’s Ulee’s Gold in 1997.

But Nuñez has not directed a film in over a decade. He returns to the screen with Rachel Hendrix and helps to revitalize the acting career of Lori Singer, still best known for her starring role opposite Kevin Bacon in 1984’s Footloose. Singer, also an accomplished classical musician, had a few other notable acting credits, in Alan Rudolph’s...

The Santa Barbara International Film Festival announced plans Wednesday for 52 world premieres and 78 U.S. premieres spanning a total of 43 countries throughout the 11-day event.

“At a time where there’s a dwindling of movie theater attendance, the role of film festivals has never been more important,” said Sbiff executive director Roger Durling. “At Sbiff, with the 38th edition, our marching orders are clear, to celebrate movies and to nurture and exalt the film community, the artists as well as the cinephiles. It’s a great slate with 43 countries represented.”

The festival starts Feb. 8 with the world premiere of “Miranda’s Victim” from director-producer Michelle Danner. The period piece is set in the year 1963 and documents the true story of Patricia “Trish” Weir (Abigal Breslin), who attempts to put her abuser behind bars after being kidnapped and sexually assaulted at 18 years old.

Director Chandler Levack’s “I Like Movies” will...

The 38th edition of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which will run Feb. 8-18, will open with Miranda’s Victim, one of 52 world premieres in this year’s lineup, and will close with the U.S. premiere of I Like Movies, one of 78 U.S. premieres, the fest announced Wednesday.

These are, of course, in addition to a slew of the career-retrospective tributes for which the fest is famous, which this year will celebrate the likes of Cate Blanchett, Brendan Fraser, Angela Bassett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, as well as panels with breakthrough artists, artisans, directors, writers, producers, female creatives and international filmmakers.

The fest will also offer a variety of free educational programs, including Mike’s Field Trip to the Movies (for 4,000-plus fourth through sixth grade students from low-income schools throughout Santa Barbara County), which this year will feature a screening of Guillermo del Toro...

The Santa Barbara Film Festival has today unveiled the lineup for its 38th edition, taking place in-person from February 8-18.

The festival will open with the world premiere of the courtroom drama Miranda’s Victim, from director Michelle Danner. Pic tells the true story of Trish Weir (Abigail Breslin), who in 1963 was kidnapped and brutally raped by Ernesto Miranda. Committed to putting her assailant in prison, Trish’s life is destroyed by America’s legal system as she triggers a law that transforms the nation. Ryan Phillippe, Luke Wilson, Donald Sutherland, Mireille Enos, Andy Garcia and more also star.

Closing out Sbiff 2023 is the Chandler Levack-directed I Like Movies, which makes its U.S. premiere. The film starring Isaiah Lehtinen, Romina D’Ugo, Krista Bridges and Percy Hynes White follows the socially inept, 17-year-old cinephile Lawrence (Lehtinen) as he gets a job at a video store, there forming a complicated...

Though 16 years had passed since Todd Field’s last film, “Little Children,” the emergence of “TÁR” on the fall festival circuit was an immediate reminder of the auteur’s filmmaking talent. The film, which stars Cate Blanchett as a prominent orchestral conductor who finds her career collapsing before her eyes after a scandal, has earned overwhelmingly positive reviews and is widely viewed as a strong Academy Award contender. The film has the potential to bring Field his first Oscar and Blanchett, for whom he specifically wrote the role, her third.

Now that he is on the frontlines of Oscar season, Field is able to look back at the humble beginnings that launched his directing career. In a recent appearance on The Hollywood Reporter Director Roundtable, Field said that his love of cinema began with many, many viewings of Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

“It started for me in high school,...

The shot that nearly broke them, the pointlessness of auditions, the gift of final cut — the directors of some of this year’s most powerful movies got together and got real about their craft. In December, Jd Dillard (Devotion), Todd Field (Tár), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths), Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick), Sarah Polley (Women Talking) and Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Woman King) convened for THR‘s annual Director Roundtable.

What’s the first thing you think about when you’re deciding whether to take on a new movie?

Gina Prince-bythewood With all of us, there’s probably a hundred movies we would like to do, but it’s “have to”: When I read it, it is an undeniable connection that I have to go on this journey. I have to put these stories into the world.

Todd Field The most dangerous thing for...

No, she’s not playing a superhero (unless you are a lifelong Tanglewood member) but Cate Blanchett is heard describing how she can stop time in the new, strange trailer for “TÁR,” the mysterious upcoming feature from Todd Field.

It’s been 16 years since Field’s last film, “Little Children,” for which Kate Winslet received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, as did Jackie Earle Haley for Best Supporting Actor and Field himself, shared with Tom Perrotta for Best Adapted Screenplay. Prior to “Little Children” was 2001’s “In The Bedroom,” which accrued five Oscar nominations: Sissy Spacek for Best Actress, Tom Wilkinson for Best Actor, Marisa Tomei for Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay for Field and Robert Festinger, and Best Picture.

Field has spent the years since his awards-heavy films not-quite-getting projects off the ground, like a television adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s “Purity” and a movie version of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian.

Quiver Distribution announced today that it will be rereleasing writer and director Victor Nunez’s 1993 award-winning film “Ruby in Paradise” in a new HD master that was fully restored from the original camera rolls and audio tracks and looks and sounds better than ever before. Ashley Judd leads in her first starring role, along with Todd Field, Bentley Mitchum, Allison Dean, and Dorothy Lyman. “Ruby in Paradise” will be available via Virtual Cinemas as well as to rent and own on North American digital HD internet, cable and satellite platforms through Quiver on February 16, 2021. Here’s a new trailer:

Ruby Lee Gissing (Ashley Judd) is on the run, determined to find something better than the closed rough life in the mountains of East Tennessee. She flees to a place once visited as a child, the “Redneck Riviera” of Panama City Beach. Arriving during the off-season, Ruby finds work in a...

The notion of Niagara Falls as more than a tourist trap — as a place where people live and labor into the off-season, when the water is “turned down” and diverted to a hydroelectric plant — is the most resonant aspect of “Clifton Hill,” a Canadian noir that owes more than a little to the municipal conspiracies of “Chinatown.” When the theme restaurants and glow-in-the-dark putt-putt courses are emptied out or closed down altogether, the remaining residents are left with the dark secrets and shadow histories that course through the town — and sometimes sit at the bottom of the gorge. Director Albert Shin confronts just such a mystery when a Niagara Falls exile returns to reexamine her past, but he’s more skilled at suggesting foul play than laying out all the convoluted details.

Though “Clifton Hill” likely won’t travel far beyond its side of the Niagara Falls border, it does...

With In the Radiant City, I wrote in my Toronto preview, Louisville, Ky native Rachel Lambert has brought to Toronto a debut film that seems like it might be the kind of laconic, unexpectedly emotional regional drama associated with filmmakers like Victor Nunez. Executive produced by Jeff Nichols, In the Radiant City follows a man, Yurley (Michael Abbott, Jr.), estranged from his family, who returns home to finally deal with the aftermath of a violent act in his family’s past. Supporting players include the always excellent Marin Ireland and Paul Sparks. Below, Lambert discusses how she connected with Nichols, why […]...

Above: Us one sheet for The 4th Man (Paul Verhoeven, Netherlands, 1983).

I’ve always liked this elegant poster for Paul Verhoeven’s The 4th Man with its striking combination of soft realism and hard geometry (that knife-like number 4!) and I decided recently to look for other designs by the artist who signs himself Topazio. But, although I have found a number of pieces with his signature, I have so far come up short on much information on the man. Vincent Topazio was, it seems, an illustrator who worked from at least the mid 70s (I found a 1975 New York magazine illustration for an article on dog trainers credited to him as well as the cover for The Average White Band’s Cut the Cake from the same year) through at least the mid 80s. I have found seven of his movie posters, all illustrated in what seems to be a combination of crayon and airbrush.

Julie Christie in Alan Rudolph's Afterglow (top); Judi Dench in John Madden's Mrs. Brown (middle); Vanessa Zima, Peter Fonda in Victor Nunez's Ulee's Gold (bottom) Lynn Redgrave, James Coburn, Fernanda Montenegro: Oscar Veterans 1998 Julie Christie Julie Christie was nominated as Best Actress for Alan Rudolph's Afterglow. She lost to Helen Hunt in James L. Brooks' As Good As It Gets. Christie had two previous Best Actress nominations: for John Schlesinger's Darling (1965), for which she won, and Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Following Altman's "anti-Western," Christie had to wait 26 years for another Oscar nod.   Judi Dench Judi Dench was nominated as Best Actress for John Madden's Mrs. Brown. That was Dench's first nomination. She lost to Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets. On the other side of the Atlantic, Dench had already won three British Academy Awards for her film work,...

I love that a heated discussion over Titanic’s infamous Oscar sweep of 1998 has already begun over at Laurent’s excellent retrospective. I guess it’s just the nature of this particular film. There is something about Titanic that hits a raw nerve in people and they feel a need to defend/criticize it so passionately.

As it happens, I fall in the ‘unconditional love’ category and I’m not afraid to admit it. To this day I have a passion for Titanic, a film that so perfectly matches what a glorious, spellbinding, big spectacle romance against an historic backdrop should be, and those films are so rare, especially when they are made with such precise and meticulous detail from James Cameron.

We shouldn’t be embarrassed over how much we loved Titanic in the 90′s. We should embrace it. So as our third ‘Choose The Winners’ article, we are...

A look at what's new on DVD today:

"The Darjeeling Limited" (2007)

Directed by Wes Anderson

Released by Criterion Collection

Anderson's underappreciated trip to India on the backs of three brothers (Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson) who take a train the country to honor their late father gets a reexamination with this Criterion Collection edition that includes a new documentary, an audio commentary from Anderson, Schwartzman and Roman Coppola, audition footage, a video essay from Matt Zoller Seitz, a chichat between Anderson and the late James Ivory about the film's music and Anderson's ad for American Express and the short "Hotel Chevalier" with Natalie Portman.

"As Good As Dead" (2010)

Directed by Jonathan Mossek

Released by First Look Entertainment

Andie MacDowell, Frank Whaley and Matt Dallas star as spurned cult members from the South who take a New Yorker (Cary Elwes) hostage years after they believe he's killed their leader in this thriller.

Leading up to our 18th birthday, I’ll be revisiting on the blog one issue of Filmmaker a day. Today’s is Fall, 1993. Peter Bowen interviewed Derek Jarman about his Wittgenstein for our Fall, 1993 cover. Holly Willis interviewed D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus about their doc on the Clinton Presidential campaign, The War Room. And there is still some useful advice in this article by Daniel Einfeld, a producer of the indie hit My LIfe’s in Turnaround, on bartering and production placement. (In the Filmmaker office, this article is kind of infamous for having what is perhaps our worst article design ever, with floating clip-art dollar signs all over the page.) I interviewed Victor Nunez about his Ruby in Paradise, which...

Next time you’re tempted to complain that the Sundance Film Festival has become a wasteland of cookie-cutter romantic comedies starring slumming TV actors, and tortured dramas about gay cowboys eating pudding, consider this: It could be worse. There was a time when “American independent film” meant indifferently shot, life-sappingly earnest melodrama, invariably with some sort of dishwater-mild social uplift. Director Victor Nunez represents a throwback to those drab old days. Like his better-known Ulee’s Gold and Ruby In Paradise, his latest movie, Spoken Word, is an up-the-middle character study, this time about a spoken-word poet (the Goal! trilogy ...

By Jeff Sneider 

In today's Callbacks -- your daily roundup of casting news from Deal Central --  Simon Baker and Paul Bettany face a financial crisis, "Abduction" star Taylor Lautner meets his "parents," Viggo Mortensen returns to Argentina, Miley Cyrus and Douglas Booth laugh out loud together, the creators of "Smallville" enroll in "Monster High," Victor Nunez's "Spoken Word" lands a distributor and Jamie Fo...

A Cannes poster for Kane and Lynch and a UK poster for The Killer Inside Me.

"Zack Hemsey's music track 'Mind Heist', which is used in the new trailer for "Inception", can be found online. Cheers to Devin 'The Spandex Fog' Faraci at Chud for the digging..." (full details)

"Michael Bay has denied reports that the somewhat racist Autobot twins - Skids and Mudflap - will be back for the third "Transformers" installment..." (full details)

"Harold Ramis apparently revealed in an ABC 7 interview that a Christmas 2012 release date is being targeted for a third "Ghostbusters"..." (full details)

"Colin Farrell will play one of the title characters in the Seth Gordon-directed New Line comedy "Horrible Bosses"..." (full details)

"IFC films has launched a new genre label called IFC Midnight. Included in their early slate are Jake West's "Doghouse" and Marina de Van's "Don't Look Back" in June, Nicolas Winding Refn...

Victor Nunez is attached to direct "El Lector" which is being produced by produced by Jane Startz Productions., Lauren Versel and Lucky Monkey Pictures. The upcoming movie adaptation of the 2007 William Durbin novel follows a Floriday girl who hopes of becoming a reader hired to entertain workers in a cigar factory. Flaminia Ocampo and Nunez ("Ruby in Paradise" and "Ulee's Gold") wrote the screenplay. Also in the cards for Lucky Monkey ("City Island") is upcoming Amy Heckerling pic "Vamps." Jane Startz Productions, known for "Ella Enchanted," has "The Cold Kiss" and "Lord of the Nutcracker Men" upcoming.

Bigstar.tv, a global online film networking community and digital distribution platform for independent cinema, will award a grand prize of $50,000 cash through their first film festival. The Bigstar Online Film Festival (Boff) has opened its global competition to short films of any genre that are five minutes or less. Boff will present the grand prize cash award to the best film of the festival, chosen by a jury of industry professionals and celebrities. Bigstar.tv will also present awards of merit for other outstanding submissions.

"Bigstar.tv was developed to showcase the work of independent filmmakers to mass audiences, assist them in developing future projects and gain recognition for their films. Boff is one of the ways we intend to foster this commitment,” commented Xavi Dalmau, President and CEO of Bigstar.tv.

Bigstar.tv has aligned with Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (Fliff) to assemble two panels of judges for the competition.

PARK CITY, Utah -- Ulysses Jackson, a k a Ulee, is a former Vietnam War hero, but his toughest battles are raising his two granddaughters. Once again, filmmaker Victor Nunez has tapped into the rich vein of family life to forge a story that says much about the resilience of the human spirit.

Featuring a full and flinty performance by Peter Fonda as Ulee, this well-wrought and thoughtful drama should prove a nugget in select-site showings.

Walking stiffly because of the constant pain he endures from his war injury, Ulee keeps pretty much to himself. That's not to say his life is not abuzz with activity: He's a rural Louisiana beekeeper who ekes out a living selling honey. Immersed in the tedium of his honey harvesting, he's fine, but his home front poses much more vexing problems. His son Jimmy is in prison, and his oldest granddaughter (Vanessa Zima) is going through a rebellious phase. Ironically, Ulee seems most in harmony with his preteen granddaughter (Jessia Biel), whose open ways and decency mirror Ulee's own disposition.

As Ulee musters all his arthritic energies toward the critical harvest season, he is stung with a horrible dilemma. His drug-addicted daughter-in-law (Christine Dunford) has washed up in Orlando and Jimmy implores Ulee to take her in. Worse, she has divulged to Jimmy's former partners-in-crime that he has held out on them, having stashed some robbery money on Ulee's bee farm.

In this spare tale, writer-director Nunez has tapped into the core of his character's strengths and weaknesses.

Neither physically healthy enough to encounter his problem nor psychologically inclined to help wrongdoers, Ulee must muster all his strength and, much tougher, struggle against his own grain to do the right thing -- help his family. It's a solitary and heroic quest.

No superhero and crippled with flaws, Ulee does the best he can. That's the beauty of this story and the pure wonder of its theme -- that man is at his best when struggling for his kin.

Fonda's understated performance as the laconic Ulee is terrific, capturing the fiber and marrow of a man who, although he sells honey, has little sweetness in his own life. Both girls, Biel and Zima, are well-cast as the granddaughters passing through a critical growing phase. J. Kenneth Campbell, as the local lawman, embodies the adage that you catch more flies with honey.

Technical credits are marvelous, from Virgil Mirano's sovereign cinematography to Charles Engstrom's smoothly whirled score.

ULEE'S GOLD

Metromedia Entertainment

Group Orion

Producer-director-screenwriter Victor Nunez

Co-producers Sam Gowan, Peter Saraf

Executive producers Edward Saxon,

John Sloss, Valerie 8

Director of photography

Virgil Mirano

Production designer Pat Garner

Costume designer Marilyn Wall-Asse

Music Charles Engstrom

Casting Judy Courtney

Sound design Pete Winter

Color/stereo

Cast:

Ulee Jackson Peter Fonda

Connie Hope Patricia Richardson

Helen Jackson Christine Dunford

Jimmy Jackson Tom Wood

Casey Jackson Jessia Biel

Penny Jackson Vanessa Zima

Eddie Flowers Steven Flynn

Ferris Dooley Dewley Weber

Running time -- 113 minutes...