Nasty Baby lulls you into thinking it’s one type of movie before revealing its true intention. Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva (The Maid, Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus) has no qualms with pulling the rug out from underneath his audience. In fact, he designed Nasty Baby that way specifically. “How much can I stretch the time for my characters to hang out,” began Silva, “so my audience will have the hardest time possible judging them when they commit a crime?”

Telling the story of gay couple Freddy (Silva, in his acting debut) and Mo (TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe), and their attempts to artificially inseminate their friend Polly (Kristen Wiig) while contending with a disruptive neighbor named The Bishop (Reg E. Cathey), Nasty Baby skirts around expectations up through its jarring final moments. In his sit down with Way Too Indie, Sebastian Silva discusses drawing influence from real-life urban landscapes, balancing behind-the-camera duties with acting, and the benefits of introducing new plot elements mid-way through the final act.

Spoilers begin mid-way through article and are identified by the “Spoilers Section” heading.

There are a lot of people in this story who could be considered outsiders, but they feel familiar. Anybody who has lived in a city knows of someone like The Bishop.
Yeah, everybody knows a Bishop for sure. If you’ve been in New York, or any city.

Are you drawing from your own experiences in Fort Greene?
There’s a lot of, I don’t know, beggars or people collecting things. People mumbling to themselves, being crazy in the streets, they are part of the urban landscape. They are there every day. I have experienced that more superficially here. I never got into a quarrel with any of those people. Maybe an exchange of words if they are assholes.

[The Bishop] comes more from one of these characters that I found in Chile. I was in Chile, probably shooting a film, and then I was staying in a neighborhood that is pretty hip. There was a neighbor that lived around there that was very much like The Bishop.

What was weird about him… even though everybody knows a Bishop this one in the movie he has keys to a house. Like, next door. He has access to one of these privileged home. These fancy brownstones in this neighbor. So he’s not a complete invader. He has his place. Nevertheless he’s terrorizing the neighborhood in its own way but it is a very ambiguous character. You don’t know what his business is… This is more based on a Chilean Bishop.

That’s the interesting contrast, Freddy doesn’t think The Bishop belongs but The Bishop doesn’t think Freddy belongs either. There’s a lot of people testing their limits with other people. Were you looking to push these characters outside of their comfort zones?
I feel that all writing is that. You have somebody in a comfortable position and then you give them a challenge. That’s pretty much where storytelling begins. I was not consciously thinking exactly that way just because it seems like a thing I take for granted. You need to push them out of their comfort zone.

The shooting style has lots of handheld, close-up shots, hanging out with these characters in very private moments. Did you want to capture an intimate feel to bring audiences into these characters?
Handheld is mostly what I’ve done in my movies, anyway. The way that I work with my DP Sergio Armstrong it’s always [like that]. On my first film, Life Kills Me, it was more sticks (i.e. tripods) and dollies but after that everything’s been handheld. The kind of stories I’m telling… when you’re telling a story that’s naturalistic, you want to portray some sense of reality to make people feel that they’re actually witnessing a piece of reality. I feel that only handheld makes sense.

Even our heads move. If you’re sitting on a chair, and witnessing something on a street, the way that you see things still feels more handheld than sticks because your head is moving up and down or things get in your way. You never see life as you see it on sticks. Your face is never fixed. In order to reproduce a sense of reality, I feel that handheld is the most effective method.

We also had time constraints as we always do in small, independent films. Going handheld also helps with the pace of shooting. You can move back and forth, do a close-up and a wide in the same shot without ever turning the camera off. It was a movie that was just begging for handheld. I don’t know how else I would have shot this film.

This is also the first time you’ve starred in one of your own films, how much of a challenge was it for you to balance those on-set responsibilities?
It was very challenging. I knew I was not going to have any issues playing Freddy when he’s doing normal shit – celebrating his boyfriend’s birthday, biking on the streets or rock climbing with a friend – I was never scared of playing that part of it. When Freddy has to [do more dramatic, spoiler-related actions] and then react to it, I was terrified of that scene and how I was going to pull that off. I did a little bit of a rehearsal and it was terrible.

I was like, “Fuck! I cannot share this with anyone because I really, truly suck at this.” But then that same fear pushed me to do it. The fear of failure that I could actually ruin this film with the stupid idea of starring in it. It was fun and I overcame the challenge. I don’t think I’m the best performer at all but I think that I look like Freddy. I look like that dude.

The most difficult thing for me that I hadn’t thought of, strangely, was the fact that I was going to be in front of the camera all of the time. I forgot, me as the director, I’m always behind it. We had such little time to shoot the film, I did not have time to look at footage. I was unaware of my performance, really. I would look at some things on the camera when I felt that things were weird or something, but most of the time I was trusting my co-actors like Kristen and Tunde, whoever was with me in the scene, and also my DP who has a really good eye for bad acting. I was among really smart people with good taste and bad acting alertness.

People who could keep you in check.
Pretty much. Also, I have to say, when you’re part of a scene, even more than being behind the camera, you can sense if things feel real. When you are in the situation, there are cameras filming you but you can forget about that for a second. You’re drinking water, you’re interacting with people. If the interactions somehow feel fake you know. You just know because you’re part of it. How could you not know that there’s something odd about it?

If there was something odd about it, I would try my best to overcome that oddness and make it natural. Make myself feel that I was really going through the situation we were portraying. It didn’t feel as hard, to be honest, as I thought it would be but it was definitely adrenaline inducing. At some points you had to delegate your trust to friends. It was a great exercise in letting go and trust.

SPOILERS SECTION

What kicked off your interest in this story?
I think it was the storyline of the Bishop, a gay couple, and the confrontations between them. A figure like The Bishop – an unwanted man in a neighborhood that is really harmonious – and a gay couple with one of them getting really frustrated by the presence of this man then taking the law in his hands by accident. That was the initial idea for a film and it had so many elements, like the crime, the moral question of whether good people do bad things. In the end, if you make [The Bishop] disappear and make this gay couple get away with murder, would the audience hate them forever? Can you make the audience forgive them or have a hard time judging them?

That was kind of the original idea and then it transformed into this hybrid that also mixes in the compulsive desire to reproduce among mid-30s or early-40s people. Why do they want to have babies? How far would they go to have a baby? Those two things then mixed up and created this idea.

Then the Nasty Baby aspect of it, Freddy doing these disgusting performances, came out of a really old idea I had, like, 15 years ago. It was like what Freddy describes in the beginning of the film. I thought that that could be a fun performance, portraying a baby. Embodying a baby in front of an audience and making a total ass of myself, go through the embarrassment of it with other people. Those three things created this film.

You have this trio of characters coming together to form a sort of family just in time for them to face their biggest challenge, I was curious what was the thought process behind combining these two distinctly disparate elements in Nasty Baby?
It’s a very manipulative movie in the first place. I know what I’m doing. I’m adding a very horrifying act for our main characters to perpetrate in the second half of the third act, which is really late in storytelling. By that moment, when this happens, things should be closing out. They should be brainstorming names for the baby at that point. They shouldn’t be trying to clean up blood in a bathtub. It’s a very conscious experiment to make my audience identify or love or understand where these characters are coming from for as long as I possibly can. How much can I stretch the time for my characters to hang out so my audience will have the hardest time possible judging them when they commit a crime?

If they commit the crime in the first half of the movie, the audience is not so involved with them. They will find them completely white, gentrified assholes who are killing a black, mentally handicapped man in a bathtub. But then, by the moment that they do it, you even find out that she’s pregnant. So you’re rooting for them so much that you fail to see the fucked-up-ness and the social injustice of what they’re doing in that bathtub. Which I also have conflicts judging. I, personally, as a writer, even as a human being. I’m not completely sure if I want them to get caught for what they did.

I think that the politics in the movie are really obvious. There’s not much to discuss. We all know that shit is very unjust and sad, but for me it’s more about the moral doubts that I leave my audience with. Do good people do bad things or are they actually fucking evil? These people might not be prepared to have a baby. It could even be seen as a homophobic movie. The moral confusion that’s left by the end of the film is the success for me. The open questions to all of these moral riddles.

I feel like in a lot of films a death loses its meaning because we see filmic deaths so often, but to have this one come so late really hits you
Yeah, you have it so late and you don’t even give the audience time to really process it. All the processing comes at their houses after watching the movie or in their cars or when they’re having dinner. I appreciate that, I feel that it’s something that I’m exploring again in a movie that I want to make now. A little bigger film, where again there is a plot that comes in very late and you just don’t expect it.

Nasty Baby, after they kill The Bishop, everything is kind of an epilog. They get rid of the body and it becomes a sort of urban fable. We don’t care about logistics. It’s not important, like, “How did they get the body inside the car? How come nobody saw them?” We’re not caring about that verisimilitude. Is that the word?

Probably.
[laughs] It’s not important to me, for me it’s more important that what’s eating the audience is, “Oh my god, these guys! We like you! How could you kill somebody? Please, god, let them get away with this. Let them have their baby in peace.” Or, “These motherfucking hipsters. I hope they get caught. I hope the police find them.”

You leave people with all of these questions, all of these expectations, projections, desires. These three people who you bond with, an audience projects all of their fears and sense of justice onto them. I find that to be the most fascinating part of this film, to be honest. If this film did not have that twist by the very end, yeah maybe it would be a sweet movie about three friends having a baby in Brooklyn, but it’s very uninteresting as a piece. I would not be into it.

Do you want all your films to leave that kind of impact?
I hope so. I think that maybe Magic Magic has it a little bit but I think even Magic Magic ends in a way that’s a relief. Death comes as a relief for Alicia especially who is suffering so much in this schizophrenic, paranoid episode she’s suffering from makes her so miserable. When she finally dies you’re relieved, at least myself. I don’t see death as the ultimate punishment, either. There are things way worse than death.

I think Magic Magic and Nasty Baby, and more so Nasty Baby, the morals of the story are not clear. You leave the audience with a lot to chew. I like that a lot. I feel that the movie closes nicely. It’s not a movie that all of a sudden cuts to black in the middle of nowhere. It cuts to black in a place that makes sense. I’m not pushing my audience off a cliff, I’m leading them to an end that is a little abrupt but at the same time, there’s nothing left to say.

It’s not quite ambiguous.
Yeah, it’s not ambiguous. You are left with moral ambiguity. That’s an achievement to me. I hope that’s what people take out of it.

In our first Way Too Indie Hangout video chat, Bernard Boo (writer), Dustin Jansick (editor-in-chief), and Ananda Dillon (editor), discuss the films that we have watched recently which include; Charlie Stratton’s In Secret (review), Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love (review to come), and Sebastian Silva‘s Magic Magic. The main topics in this episode reveal our predictions on who we think the big winners will be at the Independent Spirit Awards and as well the Oscars this weekend.

Stay tuned for future Way Too Indie Hangouts and subscribe to WTI on YouTube

“My biggest fear is for my mind to control me and not the other way around,”Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva told us at FilmHouse in San Francisco, when asked about the inspiration behind his 2013 psychological creeper Magic Magic, starring Juno Temple and Michael Cera. We spoke with him at the beginning of his tenure as the San Francisco Film Society’s 2014 artist in residence, which runs through the end of the week. Including student lectures, a screening of Magic Magic, an intimate artist talk, and filmmaker networking events, the residency program is an opportunity for emerging filmmakers to spread their knowledge across the Bay Area filmmaking community.

In Magic Magic, Temple plays Alicia, an American who travels to Chile to visit her cousin Sarah (Emily Browning). During her stay, Alicia’s mind begins to crack when her interactions with Sarah’s friends turn adversarial. The film also stars Silva’s brother, Agustin, Cera, and Catalina Sandino Moreno. Magic Magic is one of two collaborations Silva had with Cera last year, the other being kooky road trip movie Crystal Fairy, based on a real-life experience Silva had in with a girl named Crystal Fairy (played by Gaby Hoffmann).

During our chat we talked about Silva reconnecting with the real Crystal Fairy, the gift of spontaneity, his residence in San Francisco, questioning his craft, Juno Temple’s tortured acting style, and more.

For More info about Silva’s residence, visit sffs.org.

When I spoke to you last year at the San Francisco International Film Festival, you were hoping that the real Crystal Fairy was going to show up to the film’s screening that night, as you were led to believe she lived in the area.

Sebastian: She didn’t show up at that screening, but we eventually heard from her. Gaby emailed me that she had contacted the real Crystal Fairy and that she was living in Vermont. She sent me her number, and I was petrified. I wasn’t ready to talk to her, you know? I had no idea whether she liked the movie or not. I told Michael [Cera] that I had her number, and he said, “Let’s call her!” We called her on speakerphone, and she said she loved the movie. She freaked the fuck out.

She had no idea you made this movie about her, right?

Sebastian: No! I lost contact with her 13 years ago, but now she’s in my phone.

What I enjoy about this pair of movies you’ve made is that they depict Chile so differently.

Sebastian: One is “feel-good”, and one is “feel-bad”. Crystal Fairy is handheld, improvised, and Magic Magic is the most expensive movie I’ve made, with a rockstar DP, precious photography, artificial lighting…they were very different processes. They do share a lot of similarities; a girl comes to Chile in search of herself, and Michael plays an antagonist to them. There are a lot of similarities, but the movies make you feel very different.

You made Crystal Fairy fairly quickly, and filmed Magic Magic shortly thereafter. Do you think that, because the two processes were so disparate, you felt refreshed going into Magic Magic and that it helped that film?

Sebastian: Definitely. Crystal Fairy was the first movie where I explored improvisation so deeply. We had an outline, but we didn’t have a screenplay. I had to be so much more aware of my surroundings. I was making it on the go. You just feel so much more alive, and it was very challenging. That formula helped me to be more loose and open to change things in Magic Magic, which had a very rigid screenplay and shooting plan. Having shot Crystal Fairy so recently, it made me work more loosely. I’d delete entire scenes, shoot scenes on the front porch instead of the dining room. That spontaneity was a gift from Crystal Fairy, and I’m treasuring it.

I love the chemistry Michael has with Gaby and Juno, but I actually particularly enjoy the dynamic between he and your brother, Agustin.

Sebastian: It’s a great dynamic. He’s a good kid. Such a natural. He and Michael are great friends.

Gaby and Juno both give very intense performances, with Gaby’s character being an extremely positive person and Juno’s being a deeply tortured soul. 

Sebastian: Gaby’s a bit older than Juno, and Juno seems to be a more sensitive, fragile creature. For her, I think this character was a little bit of a spiritual burden, and she was sometimes overwhelmed by it. I’d give her directions to cry, act scared, act insecure, and it would bring her spirit down. Gaby’s character was ridiculous. She was preaching shit that she wasn’t doing herself, a forgivable hypocrite. They are very different women doing very different roles. It’s hard to compare them, in that sense. Gaby is one of those actresses who does a character. She doesn’t become Crystal Fairy. She’s doing a job. On the other hand, Juno started suffering like her character Alicia. When I asked her to cry, she couldn’t stop crying afterwards. She’d go to places that weren’t very healthy to get the emotions I was asking for.

You’re going to be here in San Francisco for a while as the SFFS artist in residence. You have a lot of activities lined up, including lectures for students. Have you ever spoken to students in this kind of forum before?

Sebastian: No, never. But I’ve done a lot of Q&A’s and press. It’s kind of the same. I didn’t prepare or anything. I wouldn’t know how to start a lecture. I’d rather go “Crystal Fairy” on them and improvise the lectures.

Would a younger you have enjoyed having access to a filmmaker like this?

Sebastian: It would have been nice to hear about stuff that isn’t easy, for instance. Tips I know are very useful for if you’re making your first feature, or writing your first script.

Do you think that watching a lot of movies keeps your filmmaking skills sharp?

Sebastian: I don’t really watch a lot of movies. I’m not a cinephile. I even question my craft every day. “What am I doing? Should I just paint?” It’s become my life and my craft, but I don’t completely love it. I find it very superficial at times. I have a love-hate relationship with making movies. I guess some filmmakers are sharper that way. I remember a Chilean filmmaker telling me, “If you want to shoot a car scene, just watch how Quentin Tarantino does it and copy it!” I’d never copy something. If I have to shoot a car scene, I’d figure it out on my own.

I love Michael’s character in Magic Magic, Brink.

Sebastian: He’s the best. I love Brink, too. Michael and I got so addicted to him. He’s such a closeted gay. Very creepy. I love him.

Was it your idea from the beginning to dye his hair dark?

Sebastian: Yeah. I wanted to transform him. I asked him to gain a lot of weight, but he said, “No fucking way.”

Tell me about your next project, Nasty Baby.

Sebastian: We’re locking picture at the end of March. We shot it in my neighborhood in New York, and I’m starring as the main character with Kristen Wiig and Tunde Adebimpe, the lead singer of TV On The Radio. I think we did a really good job. It’s very naturalistic and funny, but it gets a little dark. It’s not a comedy, it’s not a drama. It’s just a piece of life that goes wrong. By the end it becomes a sort of thriller.

This is your first time starring and directing, so that’s another unique filmmaking experience under your belt.

Sebastian: You want to keep it fresh, so that’s why I decided to act. It’s a very small movie so there was no risk. Co-starring with Kristen was very comfortable. She’s a great improvisor and made me feel very safe. The DP I work with on most of my films came from Chile, so I felt at home. Very comfortable. But it was very overwhelming to be directing and acting. I had no monitor to see what I was doing, see the takes. I had to just trust my co-actors. I told them, “If I’m embarrassing myself, just let me know I’m doing a shitty job.”

Time behaves very strangely here in Cannes. Days feel like they are short changed the 24 hours that they are supposed to contain. Thus, there does not seem to be enough hours in the day to do everything that you want to do. Most often time ceases to exist all together. Other times it is irrelevant like when all-night parties bleed into the next day. But then there are times when you are standing in line for a film for an hour and it feels like an eternity. Physics explains time is relative, Cannes is able to prove it.

Director Sebastián Silva and stars Juno Temple and Michael Cera on stage for Magic Magic

Only God Forgives

Only God Forgives is methodically paced, save for sudden outbursts of ruthless violence from time to time. The film resembles a jack-in-the-box as most of the time you know what is going to happen, just not when it is going to happen. The ending feels abrupt and rushed, which is actually a bit bizarre as Gosling moves so turtle like that you mistake many of his scenes to be in slow motion. The weak ending might be because it used its great showdown between characters in the middle of the film, which feels out of place and leaves for a rather anticlimactic ending. Though some broad elements from Drive are present in Only God Forgives, fans of one will by no means guarantees that you will be a fan of the other.

RATING: 5.9

Read my full review of Only God Forgives

Magic Magic

Magic Magic is a peculiar film about a girl named Alicia (Juno Temple) who travels outside of the United States for the first time to meet up with her friend Sarah (Emily Browning). As soon as she arrives into South America Alicia is greeted by Sarah and her three friends who all plan to road trip to a remote getaway together. Not long into their trip Sarah receives a phone call about an exam she must take at school that forces her to leave for a couple of days. This leaves Alicia alone with three strangers that all seem a little quirky.

But quirky might not be the right adjective to describe their character. Alicia spends only two days with them before she is calling them Satanists. One character in particular, Brink (Michael Cera), seems as if he might either be mildly mentally handicapped or on some kind of drugs. One thing is for certain, these people are not stable. But when Alicia does not sleep for four days due to her insomnia, her perception on reality is morphed.

As a whole, Magic Magic was a big letdown for me. This was one of two films Sebastián Silva had premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this year, with his other one (Crystal Fairy) earning great remarks from us from our SFIFF coverage. In this film Cera’s bizarre antics make for an interesting character, but that is about all. It is welcoming to see him play a character that is outside his typical one, but his performance was not at the top of his game. Magic Magic is a unique film featuring a mysteriously eerie vibe, though it ultimately goes to waste due to unconvincing situations and characters found within the film.

RATING: 5

With 2012 behind us and the Oscars only weeks away, the year in film for 2013 is just about to get underway. Park City, Utah is home to the Sundance Film Festival, a showcase for new independent films in America and (to a lesser degree) the rest of the world. Despite running at the start of the year, Sundance has premiered plenty of films that have eventually gone on to successful runs at the box office and award shows. If you want an example, look no further than last year when Beasts of the Southern Wild premiered to raves and ended up with four Oscar nominations including Best Picture.

So now with Sundance already getting underway, will there be another film ready to ride a wave of success all the way to awards season at the end of the year? Since Way Too Indie won’t be attending the festival this year we won’t be able to see any of the films playing yet, but we’ve gone through the festival line-up and picked the movies we’re most excited to watch. If you want to check things out yourself, the Sundance 2013 line-up can be seen here.

Way Too Indie’s Top 10 Most Anticipated Films Playing Sundance Film Festival 2013

Before Midnight (dir: Richard Linklater, Premieres)
Back in 1995 Richard Linklater released Before Sunrise, a simple but enjoyable film about an American (Ethan Hawke) and a French woman (Julie Delpy) spending the day together in Vienna. Nine years later Linklater, Hawke and Delpy reunited for Before Sunset which found the two characters reuniting in France. Sunset turned out to be one of Linklater’s best movies, and ever since then people have been wondering if a third film would ever get made. Now, nine years after Before Sunset, the three have reunited again for Before Midnight. It remains to be seen whether or not Midnight will live up to the quality of Sunrise and Sunset, but either way it’ll be nice to catch up with Jesse and Celine again. [C.J.]

Before Midnight

Touchy Feely (dir: Lynn Shelton, U.S. Dramatic)
Lynn Shelton is no stranger when it comes to Sundance, Touchy Feely will be her third film in a row that will play at the festival. Her previous film, Your Sister’s Sister, was one of my favorite films of 2012, so I was naturally excited to hear that she would be presenting a new film this year. Back again for a lead role is Rosemarie DeWitt who plays a free-spirited massage therapist but develops a mysterious aversion to bodily contact, which makes her job intolerable to do. Shelton explains that the film is “Literally and figuratively about attempting to live in your own skin.” If it is anything like her previous films, we should expect a film with less script thus more natural feeling dialog, which helps maker her films so genuine. [Dustin]

Touchy Feely

Concussion (dir: Stacie Passon, U.S. Dramatic)
When the line-up was announced I ran through the lists as quick as I could, looking for familiar names and faces, I picked up on the storylines I thought I’d like instantly, and ignored one or two I knew I wouldn’t. Looking through the list again, with personal taste and bias set aside, I noticed quite a few more that had originally got tossed aside. I saw the film still that promoted Concussion on the festival’s programme for U.S. Dramatic and was drawn in to read more. The woman looked exhausted yet beautiful; I read the small description below and was eager to find the About the Director video. Written and directed by Stacie Passon, one of the many female directors amid the Sundance 2013 line-up, the film depicts the life of a married lesbian couple, and primarily focuses on one woman’s struggle of feeling alone, jealous and ultimately sexually abandoned by the person she thought loved her the most – an interesting and diverse storyline. [Amy]

Concussion

Upstream Color (dir: Shane Carruth, U.S. Dramatic)
It has been nearly 10 years since Shane Carruth took Park City by storm with his debut film Primer. Since then his name has barely been mentioned, except for a “special thanks” credit in Looper, until just recently when Sundance made its lineup announcement. Sticking the genre he knows best, Upstream Color looks as if it is another science fiction mind-trip from Carruth. Amy Seimetz plays a woman who has been drugged and brainwashed by a small-time thief. She ends up falling in love with someone who may also be under the same influence. The film has generated a lot of buzz around the internet, making people wonder if he could once again win the Grand Jury Prize. [Dustin]

Upstream Color

I Used To Be Darker (dir: Matt Porterfield, NEXT)
Back in 2010 Matt Porterfield released Putty Hill, a radical and surprisingly powerful film that slowly built up a following of critics who passionately supported it. Shot on an incredibly low budget over 12 days, Putty Hill stood out for its gorgeous cinematography, excellent use of unprofessional actors (including pop singer Sky Ferreira) and unorthodox format that made it feel like a hybrid between documentary and fiction. Two years later Porterfield has returned, this time to a bigger venue, and will hopefully make a bigger name for himself. The story in I Used To Be Darker involves an Irish runaway staying with her American aunt and uncle whose marriage is falling apart. Going by the trailer it looks like Porterfield might have another winner in store. [C.J.]

I Used To Be Darker

Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes (dir: Francesca Gregorini, U.S. Dramatic)
There’s an unintentional theme occurring with my choice of films, being that they’re all directed by women, this one however, is a film that gains greater depth given that the auteur is female. Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes represents the personal story Francesca Gregorini has portrayed through a young female character whose mother died at child birth, therefore leaving her daughter with a missing piece to her life. The director admits that this film is autobiographical as being unable to bare children she relates to the main character’s difficulties and hardship. Francesca Gregorini lays out her feelings and emotions towards loss and despair for the world to witness through this promising, very moving film. [Amy]

Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes

Mud (dir: Jeff Nichols, Spotlight)
Mud opened to a warm reception when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, where it was in competition for the esteemed Palme d’Or award. Though Jeff Nichols’ previous thriller Take Shelter was certainly worth a watch, Mud looks like it could be an even more intense thriller than his previous work. The first trailer for the first recently surfaced on the web, just ahead of its U.S. premiere, and it certainly looks promising. Matthew McConaughey appears to have found his niche in playing the “bad guy” role recently, first with Killer Joe and now with this. [Dustin]

Mud

We Are What We Are (dir: Jim Mickle, Midnight)
Anyone who considers themselves a fan of horror films should keep their eye on Jim Mickle. Years ago his debut feature Mulberry Street, about a virus in New York City that turned people into rat-like creatures, was overlooked by people when it got released in After Dark’s “8 Films to Die For” series. Years later Mickle finally started to make a name for himself with Stake Land, an ambitious film about a vampire apocalypse. Now Mickle has returned with We Are What We Are, a dark story about a family trying to keep its horrifying traditions alive. A remake of the 2010 Mexican film with the same title, Mickle has proven himself to be a unique and talented director in the horror genre and we can only hope that his latest movie will continue that trend. [C.J.]

We Are What We Are

In a World (dir: Lake Bell, U.S. Dramatic)
Trying to keep updated with all Sundance news and updates I immediately began following almost all the directors of the official selection on Twitter in search of more information. Lake Bell was one of the later profiles I came across, and now she feels a very familiar personality and a director whose work I am really eager to see. After reading some of her seriously happy, excitable and endearing tweets towards In a World and watching the interview she gave about the film I picked up instantly on her wonderful charm and have high hopes for In a World to surprise Sundance. [Amy]

In a World

Stoker (dir: Park Chan-Wook, Premieres)
Park Chan-Wook is known best for his Vengeance Trilogy, which includes his outstanding film that previously earned him a trip to Sundance, Oldboy. This year he will be bringing his first attempt at an English-language based film, about a woman who is dealing with the recent passing of her father when a mysterious yet charming family member shows up that she has never met before. Soon she starts to suspect this family member may have some ulterior motives. Stoker is said to be a cross between a psychological thriller and a horror film, so with a veteran like Park Chan-Wook at the helm, consider this writer highly intrigued. [Dustin]

Stoker

Other films we are looking forward to

Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s writing and directorial debut Don Jon’s Addiction; George Tillman Jr.’s passion project The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete; teenage drama Very Good Girls; Midnight line-up films including S-VHS (the sequel to V/H/S), Hell Baby, Magic Magic and In Fear; Calvin Reeder’s sure to be divisive The Rambler; Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling`s follow-up to Sound of My Voice called The East; and Blue Caprice, a drama based on the Beltway sniper attacks. The Sundance film festival officially started today in Park City, Utah and will continue through January 27th.