EW sits down with three of the festival’s most exciting first-time filmmakers about their projects and much more.
Sundanceis a place of discovery.
This year, it happens to be fielding some higher-profile first-timers than usual.
Sundance Institute
There’s Golden Globe-nominated actress Rebecca Hall, behind the black-and-white adaptationPassing.
Acclaimed comic Jerrod Carmichael, whoseOn the Count of Threeis one of the fest’s buzziest titles.
And that doesn’t even cover the participants on EW’s star-studded panel.
Mass Distraction Media
Read on for edited excerpts of the conversation, and watch the full roundtable above.
And I just resonated with this script about how each individual deals with their loss, with their grief.
And it’s very singular, the way people deal with it.
Ryan Jackson-Healy/Sundance Institute
Hearing that, it made me think a lot of Fran’s film for perhaps more direct reasons.
Fran, can you talk a little bit about that and the decision to makeMass?
FRAN KRANZ:Yeah, Wow.
I’m not sure I can really speak to thesomethinghappening that is inspiring movies like this.
That’s a big question.
I don’t know if you got 45 minutes for that.
My daughter would have been 15, 16 months old when the Parkland shooting happened.
So it was a different experience for me and that was really the catalyst to finally do something.
A lot of urgent motivation.
Questlove, what about for you?
There’s a lot of found footage in your film.
I imagine there had to be a pretty concerted decision to really go forth with a project like this.
For over 300,000 people.
Even when I looked online, there was no information about it.
It took three years for it to happen.
I’d love to get into that nitty gritty, a little bit.
What were some of those challenges?
And then, COVID happened, and then we really had to get innovative.
Those same circumstances that led to the civil unrest of 1969 were happening in real time in 2020.
There are a lot of crickets, people stayed on farms, a lot of roosters [Laughs].
Stevie Wonder lives near an airport, that sort of thing.
So how do you transform one’s self?
I wanted to talk to the new generation of children.
How beautiful human beings truly are.
It’s so simple, the theme of this movie.
It’s,I know what you’ve been through.
In this movie, your character, she goesthroughit.
It’s a physically tough role.
How was that balance for you, especially this being your first film?
WRIGHT:It was a beast for sure.
You had to trust those people 400 meters away when you were freezing.
You were like “Yes or No, do we need another take?”
And they were like, “That sucked, do it again.”
You had to trust that they were right.
Fran, you’re not in your film but you are of course an actor as well.
How did you work with them?
I had a script that I was proud of.
I had certain things were really important to me.
It was a lot of flexibility.
I never felt like I was showing up with some great direction.
Sharing emotions, things like that.
I joke that I felt like I was a game manager.
I truly had this amazing, amazing cast.
Let’s talk inspirations.
WRIGHT:You nailed it.
I am a child of the ‘70’s.
Very silent movie, in the snow mostly and they really shot in the elements.
And one of the biggest inspirations just to want to be a director wasThe Black Stallion.
The child-like nature of that animal that that child brought out in that animal.
I was aligning myself with
You take minutia from all this, even songs.
I couldn’t even articulate it well, I think there’s just a lot of truth to that.
It gets a response out of you.
It does something to you.
I thought that was interesting.
Questlove, who did you have in the back of your mind while makingSummer of Soul?
But I [fell] down rabbit holes.
That was the hardest thing about making this film, that it’s way too much information.
Every minute of that movie when I was watching it just felt so fascinating.
My first draft, it was amateur hour.
[Laughs] It was three hours and three minutes and so on.
I remember finally looking back and seeing I’d only cut three minutes.
