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Amanda Kramer's By Design unmistakably fits the filmmaker’s chicly eclectic canon. Past titles like Give Me Pity! and Please Baby Please challenge convention by breaking through the constructs of today's Hollywood expectations. By Design is, as titled, designed to operate outside traditional filmmaking norms. It's a literal interpretation and commentary on female objectification about a rut-stuck protagonist whose soul inhabits a standard-definition chair. Kramer plays with surreal department store catalog visuals and body-swap quirkiness, leaning heavily on interpretive dance to convey meaning. There's nothing like it, but with such extravagant boldness comes risks, and they don’t always pay off.

Exclusive: Juliette Lewis (Yellowjackets) and Mamoudou Athie (Kinds of Kindness) lead the cast of By Design, a new indie feature written and directed by Amanda Kramer (Please Baby Please), which has wrapped production in Los Angeles.

Others in the cast include Samantha Mathis (The Exorcism), Robin Tunney (Dear Edward), Clifton Collins Jr. (Jockey), Udo Kier (Swan Song) and Betty Buckley (Eternity).

While plot details are being kept under wraps, the film has been described as a twist on the body swap genre.

Miranda Bailey and Natalie Whalen from Cold Iron Pictures produced alongside Sarah Winshall of Smudge Films (I Saw the TV Glow), Jacob Agger, and Amanda Kramer. Lauren Mann, Jason Beck, Madison McKinley, James Belfer, Karen Belfer, and Riccardo Maddalosso served as executive producers.

An Oscar nominee currently starring in Showtime’s hit drama Yellowjackets, which is heading into its third season,...

Kit Zauhar will adapt “How Should a Person Be?,” the 2010 novel from acclaimed Canadian author Sheila Heti, for the screen. Neon Heart Productions, which previously worked with Zauhar on her second feature “This Closeness,” is developing the book. According to the logline, the film adaptation will focus on “a young artist [who] faces an early mid-life crisis when a new friendship makes her question her marriage and everything else about her current life path.”

Heti is the author of eleven books to date including “Pure Colour,” “Alphabetical Diaries” and “Motherhood,” which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. “How Should a Person Be? will be the first film adaptation of her work.

Zauhar’s most recent film, “This Closeness,” is a relationship drama that she directed and wrote. It premiered in theaters this week after debuting at SXSW to critical acclaim. Her feature directorial debut, “Actual People,” premiered at Locarno Film Festival...

Kit Zauhar’s sophomore feature “This Closeness” follows the promise of her 2021 debut “Actual People,” which demonstrated she could tell an immersive story with few resources. Her microbudget feature “This Closeness,” a Narrative Spotlight premiere of SXSW 2023, is now about to open from Factory 25 on June 7, followed by a Mubi streaming premiere on July 3. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.

Per IndieWire’s 2023 SXSW preview, “This Closeness” “wields its lo-fi constraints with tremendous sophistication and insight. The entire story takes place within the constraints of a Philadelphia apartment, booked by a young couple (Zauhar and Zane Pais) for a high school reunion weekend; once there, they find themselves dealing with the awkward loner (Ian Edlund) who lives there. As tensions mount, the movie dances an elegant line between cringe-comedy and erotic thriller, with Zauhar’s character, an Asmr YouTuber, developing an enigmatic bond with their temporary roommate while...

Exclusive: Brooklyn-based indie film distribution and production company Factory 25 has acquired North American theatrical rights on writer-director Kit Zauhar’s sophomore feature This Closeness, which debuted at SXSW 2023.

The film will begin its theatrical run at the IFC Center in New York City on June 7, with further engagements and a worldwide digital release on Mubi on July 3.

The film stars Zane Pais (Margot At The Wedding) and Ian Edlund with Zauhar also starring as she did on her first feature Actual People, which debuted at Locarno in 2021. Factory 25 also released that film. Actress and singer Jessie Pinnick (Princess Cyd) and multimedia artist Kate Williams round out the cast.

Following SXSW, This Closeness screened at the Philadelphia Film Festival, the Champs-Élysées Film Festival, and the Seattle International Film Festival, where it received a special jury mention for best ensemble cast in the New American Cinema Competition.

This Closeness is produced...

New horror movies are headed to Shudder next month, including horror anthology Satanic Hispanics and tense Australian horror movie You’ll Never Find Me. And that doesn’t even touch on the repertory additions, including rare ’90s gem Ghostwatch.

Look for Satanic Hispanics to arrive on Shudder on March 8. The horror movie assembles five tales of terror from Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider), Alejandro Brugués (Juan of the Dead), Gigi Saul Guerrero (Culture Shock), Eduardo Sanchez (The Blair Witch Project), and Demian Rugna (When Evil Lurks, Terrified) unite in the first all-Latino horror anthology.

An isolated man living at the back of a desolate caravan park is visited by a desperate young woman seeking shelter from a violent storm in You’ll Never Find Me. As the savage storm worsens, these solitary souls begin to feel threatened – but who should really be afraid? Find out on March 22.

Shudder Original Special The Last...

Exclusive: UK-French sales company Alief has acquired world sales rights to Megan Seely’s dark comedy Puddysticks in which she co-stars alongside Mamoudou Athie and Dan Bakkedahl.

Seely plays Liz, a burned-out videogame designer who discovers a mysterious society of adults who heal their darkest secrets through childlike play.

Led by the alluring figure of Sylvester Cromwell (Bakkedahl), the group compels each member to reveal their most shameful memory as part of the process but when Liz finally musters the courage to share her darkest trauma, her world turns upside down.

Puddysticks is actress, writer and filmmaker Seely’s first feature length film after well-travelled short film My Loyal Audience, TV show Every Year On My Half Birthday and taking co-writing credits on 2017 feature The Mad Whale.

Her acting credits include the Filipino and American musical The Girl Who Left Home and Twist.

US singer and actress Debbie Harry and Give Me Pity! filmmaker Amanda Kramer are the latest to join the line-up of talks at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), which runs from January 25-February 4.

Harry, the lead singer of Blondie, will join the US filmmaker for a discussion on Kramer’s new sci-fi documentary, So Unreal. The film is narrated by Harry, and examines the relationship between cinema and technology in the format of a long-form video essay. Kramer uses footage from the likes of Lisberger’s Tron and Trumbull’s Brainstorm to explore technical evolution as a key theme in...

India Donaldson picked up the Polish Film Institute Award for her upcoming feature “Good One” at the American Film Festival in Wrocław, coming with a $50,000 cash prize for post-production in Poland.

“It’s an affirmation of how we have been working and what we have been working towards,” Los Angeles-based Donaldson told Variety after the ceremony.

“Good One” – presented during Aff’s industry event U.S. in Progress and set to be finished in January 2024 – sees 17-year-old Sam heading on a weekend backpacking trip in the Catskills with her father and his oldest friend.

“It’s a very personal story, although I wouldn’t say it’s autobiographical,” said Donaldson, who wrote the film during the pandemic.

“I was living at home for the first time since I was a teenager. With my father, my stepmother and my two teenage half-siblings, who were at high-school at the time. For the most part,...

Exclusive: UK-French sales company Alief has added Carol Hartsell’s Hamptons-set indie romantic comedy Love… Reconsidered to its Cannes 2023 slate on the eve of the market.

Sophie von Haselberg stars as a down-on-her-luck New Yorker whose life is suddenly transferred to the Hamptons after a chance meeting with a wealthy consignment store owner.

It is the second feature starring Bette Midler’s daughter von Haselberg sold internationally by Alief after it successfully handled Amanda Kramer’s Give Me Pity!

Other cast members include Colton Haynes, Javier Muñoz (Broadway’s Hamilton), Jill Kargman (Odd Mom Out) Marisa Ryan (Wet Hot American Summer), Rosa Gilmore (The Expanse), Luke Gulbranson, Anthony Norman (Mare of Easttown) Judy Gold (Better Things) and Elaine Bromka (Uncle Buck).

The film was scripted by Arielle Haller-Silverstone and loosely inspired by her own experiences when she lost her job during the Covid-...

When the curtain rises on Sissy St. Clare's Saturday night television special — the one she has desperately coveted for so long now — she's frank with the audience about the realities of "making it." It's no easy feat, but a girl like her isn't going to stop for anything. As her wide-eyed, brightly smiling optimism bleeds through the show's catchy opening number "I'm Making It" — punctuated by the repeated lyric "Going straight to your heart on demand!" — she tells the audience that she has so much planned for them, including stakes that go "higher and higher and higher." It tapers off and she launches into a monologue that becomes a covenant with the audience, promising them that the special won't end until she's "bashed in" and "begging each and every one of you to set me free."

As she moves back into the happy-go-lucky world of dancing and singing and "making it,...

A woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Sissy St. Claire (Sophie von Haselberg) appears on a soundstage for her Saturday night television special. Like the tireless performers who came before her, St. Claire will spend the duration of the broadcast showcasing elaborate outfits, dramatic monologues, groan-worthy jokes, peppy musical numbers and an assortment of special guests (some human and others canine). Tonight is either her big break or the conclusion of a descent into madness—either way, don’t dare change that channel! Give Me Pity!, the latest film from director Amanda Kramer, is a warped take on variety show […]

The post “Part Emulation and Part Making Shit Up”: Amanda Kramer on Give Me Pity! first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

A woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Sissy St. Claire (Sophie von Haselberg) appears on a soundstage for her Saturday night television special. Like the tireless performers who came before her, St. Claire will spend the duration of the broadcast showcasing elaborate outfits, dramatic monologues, groan-worthy jokes, peppy musical numbers and an assortment of special guests (some human and others canine). Tonight is either her big break or the conclusion of a descent into madness—either way, don’t dare change that channel! Give Me Pity!, the latest film from director Amanda Kramer, is a warped take on variety show […]

The post “Part Emulation and Part Making Shit Up”: Amanda Kramer on Give Me Pity! first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Winnie Cheung’s “Residency,” which has its world premiere in the Bright Future section of Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam, has debuted its trailer (below). Alief is selling the film, which is a “haunting metafictional tale about female artists pushed beyond their limits at a cursed artist residency.”

The film, set at New York artists’ studio The Locker Room, is described by Alief’s Miguel Angel Govea as “an adventurous take on the final girl horror trope.” It is a “hybrid feature dancing between fiction and non-fiction norms that plays like a punk rock cover of Gaspar Noé’s ‘Climax.'”

Cheung commented: “Rather than representing women as sexualized victims through the traditional lens of male fantasies, I’m exploring the real horror behind the anxiety of being a female artist, which is often mixed in with pleasure, delirium and joy.”

Cheung was the editor and one of the producers of “Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched,...

One of the wildest, campiest, least apologetic films of the 2022 festival season is “Please Baby Please.” Amanda Kramer’s 1950s-set LGBT musical thriller tells the story of a straight-passing married couple who begin questioning their conceptions of gender, sexuality, and monogamy after witnessing a murder and becoming involved with a greaser gang known as the Young Gents. The movie premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival and was soon acquired by Music Box Films, who is giving it a theatrical release later this year.

“There are many things we love about this film, including Andrea Riseborough’s fierce and fearless performance,” said Music Box Films’ Brian Andreotti. “Director Amanda Kramer’s bold mise en scene and stylized 1950s iconography combine to give adventurous audiences a highly entertaining musing on gender roles and desire that is both timely and timeless,”

“Please Baby Please” is directed by Amanda Kramer, working from a script...

Utopia has acquired Participant’s feature documentary “Unseen Skies,” which the U.S. distributor will release on Sept. 13.

Directed by award-winning filmmaker Yaara Bou Melhem, “Unseen Skies” explores the evolution of state and corporate surveillance. The film follows American artist and geographer Trevor Paglen as he launches an artwork called “Orbital Reflector” into space, visible with the naked eye from Earth, to highlight the global impact of technology in the modern world.

Having achieved international notoriety for his conceptual art, which fuses photography and large-scale multidisciplinary events, Paglen’s work reveals the largely unseen power structures of technology and surveillance that shape, impact and increasingly define the framework of our lives.

A MacArthur Genius award winner and author, Paglen is known for his photography documenting the black ops sites of government surveillance and data collection, as well as installations such as Sight Machine, in which the musical group Kronos Quartet...

The phenomenon of celebrities who are famous just for being famous is one of those things which makes perfect sense to insiders and is a complete mystery to everyone else. It has become more common in the internet age, but it has its roots in US TV shows which have changed remarkably little between the 1950s and the 2020s. Give Me Pity!, one of a pair of contributions to the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival by writer/director Amanda Kramer, presents viewers with an imaginary take on one such show and allows it to flow, unhindered, to its logical extreme.

The star of this show is one Sissy Sinclair. We see her first in full Baby Jane get-up, with added angel wings and bridal veil, talking about how...

Chosen as the protagonist of the Rotterdam Film Festival’s Focus section, Amanda Kramer will show eight films to the festival audience, ranging from her 2016 short “Bark” to “Give Me Pity!” and this year’s opener “Please Baby Please,” both set to celebrate their world premieres at the festival.

“It’s a funny thing, to be a relatively obscure artist given this very pronounced focus on your work,” Kramer tells Variety. “When Rotterdam was so keen to show it, I was just elated. It felt like I had done something right.”

In “Please Baby Please,” starring Andrea Riseborough and Harry Melling as a couple suddenly faced with their long-dormant fantasies, as well as a violent greaser gang, Kramer turns her attention to the 1950s.

“When people talk about that time, they usually go for this cinched waist, poodle skirt, preppy aesthetic. What I am drawn to is the sleazier, more...

A Primetime Saturday Night Network Television Spectacular starring Sissy St. Claire! Sissy St. Claire graces the small screen for her first ever television special, an evening full of music and laughter, glamour and entertainment! But Sissy’s live event quickly begins to curdle into a psychedelic nightmare of vanity, insecurity and delusional ambition, provoked by the glowering presence of a mysterious masked man. Amanda Kramer's Give Me Pity! will have its world premiere at Internation Film Festival Rotterdom soon. Give Me Pity! is particpating in the Special “Filmmaker in Focus” Section at IFFR. Special only begins to describe this. Someone close to the production made an effort though. They told us that Give Me Pity! is "A demented greatest hits of 80s variety shows, peppered with...

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