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Russian filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky, who has faced down numerous accusations about his treatment of women on the set of his sprawling film and multimedia project “Dau,” defended his controversial filmmaking method Thursday at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Speaking with Variety at the long-running Bosnian fest, where the director is being honored, Khrzhanovsky was asked if he had any regrets about the intense and immersive nature of his work, which saw a cast of thousands of mostly non-professionals actors living for up to three years on a closed set from which allegations of abuse subsequently emerged.

“Not at all. I think the method was absolutely unique and perfect,” the director said. “Methodologically, I think I did everything right. And I think it’s a very interesting methodology, and I think it’s important to look at it without preconception, and without using the rumors.”

Khrzhanovsky cited a series of scandals that...

Director-artist Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, best known for the “Dau” project, will be the subject of the “Tribute To” program at the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival, with a curated retrospective of his films.

Khrzhanovskiy was born in Russia and graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (Vgik), but last year, the Russian Ministry of Justice added him to its list of foreign agents, and he subsequently renounced his Russian citizenship.

His debut feature film “4” won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2005, and the best director awards in Buenos Aires and Athens. The film was screened at over 50 festivals and distributed worldwide.

Since 2006, he has been working on “Dau,” a multidisciplinary project at the intersection of film, art and anthropology. In 2006, “Dau” was selected for the Atelier of the Festival de Cannes. He shot 700 hours of footage, from which 14 feature films, three TV series, video performances and scientific films were created.

A very busy Broadway season comes to a close with its final production, and Sam Gold’s staging of Macbeth starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga is nothing if not a dynamic attempt to cap an unusual and often extraordinary theater season. Uneven – if not so much as Gold’s 2019 King Lear with Glenda Jackson – and peppered with choices both curious and captivating (a brief prologue that’s as funny as it is timely), this iteration of The Scottish Play, which opened last night at the Longacre Theatre, nearly holds up to the unavoidable hype of its starry cast.

Craig, 007-strong if forcefully one-note in the title role, and Negga – whose transformation from murderously ambitious soldier’s wife to haunted, spot-damning wreck is one of the production’s delights – lead a large cast that includes stand-outs Amber Gray (in the gender-switched role of...

Exclusive: Gravitas Ventures, a Red Arrow Studios company, has acquired rights to Lanie Zipoy’s film The Subject, starring Jason Biggs, Aunjanue Ellis, Anabelle Acosta and more, with plans to release it in select theaters across the U.S., as well as on Tvod and digital platforms across North America, on October 22.

Zipoy’s feature directorial debut follows Phil Waterhouse (Biggs), a successful white documentary filmmaker dealing with the fallout from his previous film, which caught the murder of a Black teen on tape.

Its ensemble also includes Carra Patterson (Straight Outta Compton), Nile Bullock (Ray Donovan), and Caleb Eberhardt (Judas and the Black Messiah).

Chisa Hutchinson wrote the script.

Zipoy produced the film with Megan Kingery Gahlia Eden (You Can’t Do That) and Jess Weiss (American Insurrection).

Jason Biggs,...

Despite what you may have read, The Right Girl is not a musical about Harvey Weinstein. Then again, having been created by one of the first women to speak out against the rapist, it’s not not a musical about Harvey Weinstein.

Had Broadway not gone dark with the coronavirus pandemic last March, audiences might already be deciding for themselves how much Weinstein there is in the musical’s villain, and how much is Cosby or Lauer or any of the dozen or so famous men melded into the fictional predator The Right Girl calls Paul. If the big-name creative team behind the production has its way, audiences will still get that chance, either in a future vaccine-protected Broadway theater or on a home screen set to a favorite streaming platform. Either way, The Right Girl could become one of the first major works of commercial entertainment – certainly the first...

On paper, “Dau. Natasha” is the first film in a franchise that gives the Marvel Cinematic Universe a run for its money. But calling the “Dau” film series a franchise is a bastardization of Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s intent as genuinely as it is a misnomer for its cultural identity. No one will flock to midnight screenings for the next chapter of “Dau,” and that’s not because of the circumstances.

Continue reading ‘Dau. Natasha’: Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Dream Of Grandeur; A Hulking Multimedia Art Installation & Real Life ‘Synecdoche, New York’ [Review] at The Playlist.